Washington Report on Middle East Affairs - August/September 2019 - Vol. XXXVIII, No. 5

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NEOCON BILLIONAIRE OUTSOURCES TECH JOBS TO ISRAEL

DISPLAY UNTIL 9/21/2019

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TELLING THE TRUTH SINCE 1982

Volume XXXVIII, No. 5

On Middle East Affairs

August/September 2019

INTERPRETING THE MIDDLE EAST FOR NORTH AMERICANS ✮ INTERPRETING NORTH AMERICA FOR THE MIDDLE EAST

THE U.S. ROLE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE

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Baltimore Slumlord Tells Palestinians How to Behave —Sami Tayeb

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Sixty-Eight Percent of Americans Would Reject Trump’s Mideast “Deal of the Century” —Grant F. Smith

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Money is Not the Answer —Mohammed Omer

The Book of Palestine: National Liberation vs Endless Negotiations—Ramzy Baroud

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From Right of Return to Right to Starve and Kill —Walter L. Hixson

Leaked Report Accuses Top UNRWA Officials of Misconduct, Mismanagement and Worse —Ian Williams

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Jerusalem’s Cable Car Controversy: Making Palestinians Invisible—Jonathan Cook

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“We Go Back 800 Years”: Palestinian Fights Settler NGO’s Takeover of Jerusalem Hotel—Nir Hasson How NeoCon Billionaire Paul Singer Is Driving the Outsourcing of U.S. Tech Jobs to Israel —Whitney Webb

Elbit Systems: Bringing Israeli Apartheid to the U.S. Mexican Border—Stephen Welty

What City and State Leaders Got Wrong in Israel this Summer—Dale Sprusansky Takoma Park Withstands Pressure to Cancel “Occupation of the American Mind” —Delinda C. Hanley

Christian Zionist Lobby is Built on Anti-Semitic Theology—Lynn Gottlieb and Graylan Hagler Fakhoury Family Keeps Ottoman-Era Pottery Techniques Alive in Hebron—Miriam Deprez

SPECIAL REPORTS Khashoggi Assassination Continues to Draw Congressional Reaction, But to Little Effect—Shirl McArthur

Hurling Threats and Sanctions, Trump Tightens Noose on Iran—Four Views—Trita Parsi, Eli Clifton, Vijay Prashad, Kaveh L. Afrasiabi

U.S. Sanctions on Hezbollah to Carry Long-Term Impact in Lebanon, Middle East —Sami Moubayed

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Mohamed Morsi: An Egyptian Tragedy —Abdullah Al-Arian Rohingyas: U.N. Recognizes Failures, Myanmar Shrugs—John Gee Lisbon Exhibit Showcases the Rise of Islamic Art —Marvine Howe

ON THE COVER: Israeli soldiers prevent a Palestinian man from entering the area where Israeli forces are razing a building they say is too close to the apartheid wall, in the neighborhood of Wadi Homs in East Jerusalem, July 22, 2019.

Issam Rimawi/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

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(A Supplement to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs available by subscription at $15 per year. To subscribe, call toll-free 1-888-881-5861.)

Other Voices

Compiled by Janet McMahon

Is Trump Envoy Jason Greenblatt Helping Israel Violate U.S. Law?, Josh Ruebner, electronicintifada.net

OV-1

Thanks McDonald’s, for Reminding Israel There Is a Green Line, and Even a Red Line, Gideon Levy, Haaretz

OV-2

Remembering the World Court Advisory Opinion on Israel’s Separation Wall After 15 Years, Richard Falk, richardfalk.wordpress.com

OV-3

Israel Systematically Hiding Documents Proving Expulsion, Oppression of Palestinians, Juan Cole, www.juancole.com

OV-7

The Wheels Are Coming Off, Gary Sick, lobelog.com

OV-8

When NPR Is More Dangerous Than Fox News, Robert Wright, The Mindful Resistance Newsletter OV-10 Bret Stephens, Warmonger, Andrew J. Bacevich, theamericanconservative.com

OV-11

Turkey Calls Trump’s Bluff, Eric S. Margolis, EricMargolis.com

OV-12

OV-5

Iraq’s Babylon Listed as World Heritage Site

By UNESCO, Al Jazeera, www.aljazeera.com OV-13

OV-6

Bidding Farewell to My Soulmate and Cellmate, Dr. Sami A. Al-Arian, electronicintifada.net

Israel’s “Environmental Crisis” Is of its Own Making, Ramzy Baroud & Romana Rubeo, www.aljazeera.com

The Administration’s Futile Flailing on Iran, Paul R. Pillar, lobelog.com

OV-14

DEPARTMENTS 5 Publishers’ Page

6 letters to the editor

60 MusiC & arts: Artist Creates Soccer Ball From Israel’s Apartheid Wall

65 diPloMatiC doings: Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan Makes First Official U.S. Visit

67 booK reVieW: Our American Israel: The Story of an Entangled Alliance —Reviewed by Walter L. Hixson

69 Middle east booKs and More 70 the World looKs at the Middle east — CARtOOnS

(L-r) Middle East Books and More director Sami Tayeb, Washington Report managing editor Dale Sprusansky, summer interns Aaron Carter, Yasmine Mattoussi and Mia Khatib.

71 other PeoPle’s Mail 73 obituaries

74 2019 aet Choir oF angels 57 indeX to adVertisers

STAFF PHOTO D. HANLEY

60 Waging PeaCe: Lawrence Wilkerson Reflects on Similarities Between Push for War in Iraq and Iran

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American Educational Trust

As we went to press, Israel was in the process of demolishing dozens of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, claiming they were illegally built too close to its “separation barrier” (better known as the “apartheid wall”) that divides the city from the West Bank. As appalling as these demolitions are, they are not an isolated development. Rather, they are part of an ongoing Israeli attempt to fundamentally change the character of Jerusalem by Judaizing its Muslim and Christian neighborhoods.

Seizures in Jerusalem

AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Demolitions in Jerusalem

Bipartisan BDS Opposition

As Israel continued its ongoing colonization efforts in Jerusalem, the House of Representatives in the U.S. was busy demonizing those who have the gall to question Israeli policy. The House on July 23 approved a resolution opposing the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Only 16 Democrats and one Republican (libertarian Thomas Massie of Kentucky) voted against the non-binding resolution.

Although the vote was disappointing, it did contain some…

After immense pressure from civil rights groups, the authors of the resolution were successfully pressured into including a provision reaffirming the rights of Americans to criticize the policies of any foreign government. Also, the very fact that Congress AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

liberal city of Takoma Park, MD came under immense pressure from pro-Israel activists this summer to cancel a screening of the much-acclaimed film “The Occupation of the American Mind.” After initially postponing the film screening, city officials ultimately didn’t give in to pressure and screened the film in late July. As Delinda Hanley shows (on p. 34), efforts to silence the film only piqued interest in the event, and an overflow room was needed to accommodate the large crowd! Another defeat for the gatekeepers in the Israel lobby.

Israel demolishing a Palestinian building in East Jerusalem.

In this issue Jonathan Cook (p. 19) outlines how Israel’s plan to construct a cable car across Jerusalem not only causes aesthetic concerns, but is also meant to usher tourists into illegal settlements and away from Palestinians and their businesses. Nir Hasson (p. 22) outlines one family’s uphill battle to save their hotel in East Jerusalem from a settler group that purchased its land in a dubious deal with the Greek Orthodox Church. In both cases, it appears settlers are on the precipice of acquiring (stealing) more land and economic opportunity from the city’s Palestinian residents.

Promising Signs.

Publishers’ Page

feels the need to bow down to the pro-Israel lobby and target BDS activists with frivolous resolutions shows just how concerned Israel and its supporters are about the growing strength of the Palestinian solidarity movement. Ultimately, the only thing the resolution showed was how deeply loyal Congress is to AIPAC and the pro-Israel lobby—but that’s something we already knew!

“The Tsunami of History”

The House’s vote on BDS is further proof that Israel is running scared in the face of growing international opposition to the country’s defiance of international law and abuse of human rights. Nkosi Zwelivelile Mandela, a member of parliament in South Africa and the grandson of Nelson Mandela, accurately summed up the present moment in history during his speech to the UK’s “PalExpo” in early July. “BDS is the most painful thorn in the side of apartheid Israel,” he said, noting the country will do all it can to stop BDS and its principles from gaining momentum. “I have news for them though,” he continued. “There is nothing you can do to stop the tsunami of history.

You may frustrate, obstruct or obscure, but in the end justice will prevail.”

Starting Local

Throughout this country, educators and activists are working hard to make sure efforts to obstruct truth and justice fail. Across the border from Washington, DC, the proudly

Local Jobs and Politicians to Israel

Do you have a neighbor, family member or friend who has been laid off from a tech job? If so, that job may have gone to Israel.

Whitney Webb describes in detail (on p. 25) neoconservative billionaire Paul Singer’s “Start-Up Nation Central” initiative to boost Israel’s image as a place of innovation in the face of the BDS movement. Singer’s campaign has resulted in corporations such as Google and Microsoft transferring thousands of jobs to Israel. Meanwhile, Stephen Welty reveals (on p. 29) how Israeli technology is increasingly being used for surveillance at the U.S.-Mexico border, a move that threatens both privacy rights and human rights. Despite Israel’s condemnable human rights record and efforts to court American jobs, Dale Sprusansky (on p. 31) notes that major city and state leaders continue to travel to the country on economic missions.

Continue Your Support

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WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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Executive Editor: Managing Editor: Contributing Editor: Other Voices Editor: Middle East Books and More Director: Finance & Admin. Dir.: Art Director: Founding Publisher: Founding Exec. Editor: Board of Directors:

DELINDA C. HANLEY DALE SPRUSANSKY WALTER HIXSON JANET McMAHON SAMI TAYEB CHARLES R. CARTER RALPH-UWE SCHERER ANDREW I. KILLGORE (1919-2016) RICHARD H. CURTISS (1927-2013) HENRIETTA FANNER JANET McMAHON JANE KILLGORE

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (ISSN 87554917) is published 7 times a year, monthly except Jan./Feb., March/April, June/July and Aug./Sept. combined, at 1902 18th St., NW, Washington, DC 20009-1707.

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Published by the American Educational Trust (AET), a nonprofit foundation incorporated in Washington, DC by retired U.S. foreign service officers to provide the American public with balanced and accurate information concerning U.S. relations with Middle Eastern states. AET’s Foreign Policy Committee has included former U.S. ambassadors, government officials, and members of Congress, including the late Democratic Sen. J. William Fulbright and Republican Sen. Charles Percy, both former chairmen of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Members of AET’s Board of Directors and advisory committees receive no fees for their services. The new Board of Advisers includes: Anisa Mehdi, John Gareeb, Dr. Najat Khelil Arafat, William Lightfoot and Susan Abulhawa.

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs does not take partisan domestic political positions. As a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, it endorses U.N. Security Council Resolution 242’s land-for-peace formula, supported by nine successive U.S. presidents. In general, it supports Middle East solutions which it judges to be consistent with the charter of the United Nations and traditional American support for human rights, self-determination, and fair play.

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LetterstotheEditor

HOPE FOR THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY WHEN IT COMES TO ISRAEL

The New York Times recently asked the Democratic presidential candidates, “Do you think Israel meets international standards of human rights?” It was gratifying to see that, even though most candidates did the obligatory pandering to Israel, they did not totally ignore the rights of the Palestinians. I think that something on this scale is new and (hopefully) promising for the future.

Barbara Gravesen, Lady Lake, FL Every candidate did indeed offer at least some level of praise for Israel, but there were (slight) reasons for hope.

Here is an overview of how the leading candidates responded to the question: Sen. Bernie Sanders said, “I have great concerns about the role that Netanyahu is playing in Israel and their relationship with the Palestinians....the role of the United States is to work with all of the entities in the region, including the Palestinians, and to do that in an evenhanded way.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren said, in part, “We need to encourage our ally [Israel] the way that we would any good friend, to come to the table with the Palestinians and to work toward a permanent solution....The U.S. cannot dictate the terms of a long-term settlement with the Palestinians and the Israelis....It is not in the long-term interest of either the Palestinians or the Israelis to continue on the path they’re on. They need to come to a two-state solution.”

Sen. Kamala Harris was by far the least critical of Israel of the major candidates (former Vice President Joe Biden declined to answer the question). She said, “I think that Israel as a country is dedicated to being a democracy and is one of our closest friends in that region, and that we should understand the shared values and priorities that we have as a democracy and conduct foreign policy in a way that is consistent with understanding the alignment between the American people and the people of Israel.”

FRUSTRATION WITH DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES

I just sent letters to Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib. The first letter shows my frustration with the

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Democratic presidential candidates because their support for basic human rights seems to stop at the border. Sen. Kamala Harris’ recent comments in a New York Times interview show that she devalues the Palestinians at every turn in their struggle with the Israeli occupation.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is slightly better and Sen. Bernie Sanders is trying, but the others are mostly failing.

My second letter to Rashida Tlaib asks for an investigation to be done that exposes how Israel has tested brutal weapons and methods on the besieged Palestinian population and then sold those “products” to U.S. government bodies like the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The brutality that we see at the U.S.Mexico border suggests that America is using Israeli tactics in its assault on Central American assylum seekers. These dirty war private contractors (some are American) need to be confronted.

Thomas C. Welch, Cambridge, MA We understand Barbara Gravesen’s optimism in the previous letter, but we also understand your pessimism. While the major candidates at times deviate from the traditional position of unflinching support for Israel, they by and large uphold the status quo. Hope for real change lies in the younger generation of legislators, such as Tlaib, Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Ilhan Omar.

We encourage you to see p. 29 to read Stephen Welty’s article on the use of Israeli technology at the U.S.-Mexico border.

ISRAEL’S ATTEMPTS TO COURT CANADA’S INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

On June 4, Canada’s government accepted the findings of a national inquiry into the fate of murdered and vanished indigenous females and acknowledged that Canada has inflicted genocide on its indigenous population. It’s worth remembering that back in 2013, Bernie Farber, former chief executive officer of the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) joined Assembly of First Nations national chief Phil Fontaine to argue that Canada had committed a form of genocide against indigenous peoples.

The irony of this remembrance is that the CIJA has sponsored countless Israel

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

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junkets for Canadian politicians pretty well during the First InKEEP THOSE CARDS AND LETTERS and indigenous leaders while Istifada until the men barged in.

COMING! rael illegally occupies and develGregory DeSylva, Rhinebeck, Send your letters to the editor to the Washington ops indigenous Palestinian terriNY Report, P.O. Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009 tory. Unfortunately, the Israeli Throughout history, those desor e-mail <letters@wrmea.org>. state has largely succeeded in stiperately fighting for their liberafling the prospect of Palestinian sover- tire-burning, burning kite-flying, and—al- tion, such as the Palestinians, have regueignty with generous and consistent sup- legedly—bomb-throwing Palestinian larly been described as violent, while their port from the U.S. and Canadian govern- males at the front. All of this played right more powerful oppressors are portrayed ments. Had Canada’s indigenous people into Israel's hands, enabling it to charac- as civilized and morally upright actors reenjoyed the level of American military, terize the protests as riots threatening Is- grettably forced to deploy violence in economic and diplomatic support avail- rael and as a smokescreen for Hamas at- order to ensure their safety. We encourable to the State of Israel, the map of tacks on Israel. This conditioned govern- age you to read the letter to the editor timent reactions, enabling Secretary of tled “Facts Matter When Debating PalesCanada would look very different today.

Canada’s indigenous people have more State Mike Pompeo to frame Israel's cruel tine-Israel Conflict” on p. 71, in which the in common with those dispossessed live-fire response as self-defense and for writer astutely compares Israeli violence Palestinians than the European Zionists the EU to blame Hamas for "instigating vi- to Palestinian violence. We’d also point who gradually supplanted these native olence and terrorist activity at the bor- out that Israel regularly uses violence Arabs with help from Britain and the United ders." Those views have significant impli- against non-violent Palestinian protesters States. Manufacturing solidarity between cations for Western policies toward the and has waged a global campaign to asan oppressed indigenous population and opposing parties. Thus, Israeli propa- sociate the peaceful BDS movement with the citizens of a powerful and privileged ganda appears to have prevailed again. violence and anti-Semitism. There’s simThis is tragic because the only hope ply no winning for the Palestinians. We state is a tactic beyond cynicism. for the Palestinians is to win the public do agree that violence is often unethical Morgan Duchesney, Ottawa, Canada Any student of history knows that for information battle, which they're losing and self-defeating. We simply wish Israel decades, the indigenous populations of badly. Witness the 2018 Pew poll show- was held to the same standard as the North America, South America, Australia ing that Americans favor Israel over them Palestinians in this regard. and elsewhere faced persistant racist 46 percent to 19 percent. I believe this is and genocidal campaigns by colonists. because most Americans view them as MORE U.S. AGGRESSION Accounts of “savage” and “uncivilized” militants and terrorists. The only way to The U.S. has an abysmal record in fornatives filled the newspapers of the era change this is to eschew even the ap- eign policy decisions, often manufacturing and are enough to deeply rattle modern pearance of violence and to steadfastly crises to fulfill political agendas. Rememreaders. Unfortunately, disturbingly simi- practice non-violent resistance. But, as ber the Gulf of Tonkin resolution which lar language about “uncivilized” Pales- long as their angry young men intrude, precipitated the Vietnam War causing the tinians can be found in the media con- this is impossible. Maybe it's time for death of 58,000 Americans and millions of sumed by settlers and other members of Palestinian women to lead and for the Vietnamese? President Nixon and Henry the growing Israeli far-right. Similar lan- men to stay away. They were doing Kissinger decided to bomb Cambodia and Laos without informing Congress, causing guage, while perhaps more coded, unthe additional deaths of millions of Camderlies the statements of many U.S. bodians and Laotians. Readers may repoliticians who regularly question call the CIA/MI6 coup which deposed dewhether Palestinians are capable of mocratically elected Prime Minister Moachieving peace—or if they exist as a hammad Mosaddegh of Iran in 1953, in a people at all! blatant effort to steal the country’s oil. The Sadly, modern Israel provides a winNational Iranian Oil Company was subsedow into how the racist settler projects of quently re-branded as BP. past centuries functioned. Lets hope President Trump dishonored the 2015 Americans (and Canadians) of all stripes nuclear deal and sent an unmistakable finally connect the very obvious dots and message that a U.S. signature on an inwork to end the injustice of the 21st centernational agreement is worthless. Iran, tury’s most pernicious and ongoing setOTHERVOICESisan optional16-page supplement suffering from the crushing blow of ecotler-colonial project. available only to subscribers of the Washington nomic sanctions, has every right to DOWNPLAYING VIOLENCE IN GAZA cease honoring the agreement. Let us Report on Middle East Affairs. For an additional $15 Phyllis Bennis’ “The Amputation Crisis in hope the P5+1-1 (U.S.) nations do not per year (see postcard insert for Washington Report Gaza...” in the June/July issue makes succumb to U.S. economic blackmail. subscription rates), subscribers will receive Other some good points, but her characterizaTejinder Uberoi, Los Altos, CA Voicesinsideeachissueof their WashingtonReport tion of the Great March of Return as Let’s hope the U.S. government will on Middle East Affairs. "overwhelmingly nonviolent" is too facile. one day learn that deadly interventions Back issues of both publications are available. To The protesters didn't appear nonviolent in pay little dividends. Until then, it’s up to subscribe telephone 1 (888) 881-5861, fax (714) videos and news reports such as USA “We the People” to press leaders to 226-9733, e-mail circulation@wrmea. org>, or write Today's May 3, 2018 article, which dechange the orientation of our foreign polto P.O. Box 91056, Long Beach, CA 90809-1056. scribed rock-throwing, slingshot wielding, icy. ■ AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

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Special Report

A building owned by Kushner Companies in the Williamsburg neighborhood of New York City. Current and former tenants filed a $10 million lawsuit in the New York State Supreme Court in July 2018, claiming that the Kushner family business tried to force them out of their rentstabilized apartments with constant construction, including “loud and obnoxious drilling” and “constant clouds of smoke and dust.”

IN JUNE JARED KUSHNER unveiled his plan for bringing peace and stability to the region through his “Peace to Prosperity Workshop” in Bahrain. Christine Lagarde of the International Monetary Fund and David Malpass of the World Bank were in attendance, as were economic ministers and wealthy investors from the Gulf.

Noticeably missing from the workshop, however, were Palestinian and Israeli delegations, whose future the attendees were there to decide. The Palestinian Authority announced well in advance that they would be boycotting the conference, and the Israelis were not invited because the optics of Gulf leaders sitting next to Israelis would not go over well back home. Despite numerous reports of Gulf leaders collaborating economically with Israel, the leaders of Gulf countries still publicly have to pretend to their citizens that they are not openly cooperating and normalizing relations with Israel and breaking the long-standing Arab League boycott of Israel.

Sami Tayeb, director of Middle East Books and More, frequently writes about the political economy of the Middle East.

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In his opening speech, Kushner made no mention of the Israeli occupation and said nothing of Palestinian national, economic, human and civil rights, nor Palestinians’ rights to their own land and resources. Kushner made clear that he was not there to find a political settlement by declaring, “today is not about the political issues.” He then proceeded to belittle and berate Palestinians through a series of Orientalist tropes throughout the rest of his speech. While no Palestinians were in the room (except for a handful of Palestinian businessmen who are known to openly collaborate with the Israeli state and settler movement, such as Ashraf Jabari from Hebron), Kushner insisted that “this workshop is for you,” only, “if you are willing to try new things and think outside of the traditional box.”

Through a radical use of the passive voice, Kushner absolved Israel of its war crimes and, instead, told Palestinians that they are victims of their own terror and have to stop blaming others for their own misfortune. Pivoting to the Gulf Arabs in the room, he said: don’t blame Israel, blame yourselves for why there isn’t a better business environment in Palestine.

Nonetheless, in taking a page from 19th-century British colo-

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PHOTO BY DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES

Baltimore Slumlord Tells Palestinians How to Behave

By Sami Tayeb

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nial literature, Kushner promised there is still hope for wayward Palestinians, if only they convert and become disciples of his plan. He reiterated that “President Trump and America have not given up on you,” signaling to Palestinians that they just have to believe that America knows what is best for them.

What did Kushner’s plan promise? In his fantastical presentation, albeit completely detached from reality, Kushner presented impressive numbers. He said his plan will double the Palestinian gross domestic product, create one million jobs, reduce unemployment to nearly single digits and reduce the poverty rate by 50 percent. According to Kushner, all of this would be achieved through a $50 billion fund; approximately half of it would go toward a bribe to Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt, while the rest would presumably be spent in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. As Palestinian journalist Ali Abunimah notes, if Israel simply allowed Palestinians to develop their own land and gave access to their own resources, the economic boon for Palestinians would be greater than what the Kushner plan proposes. The fact that the U.S. routinely funds Israel’s military with comparable amounts of money should not be sidelined. One of President Obama’s final acts in office was to approve $38 billion over a 10-year period to Israel’s military.

Kushner’s plan is not original nor is it meant to achieve the goals that he claims. Instead, it is a rehashing of the Palestinian Reform and Development Plan and the subsequent Palestinian statehood plans that were proposed under Prime Ministers Salam Fayyad and Rami Hamdallah, which were the outcome of the 2007 Paris Donor Conference. For the past 12 years the international community has been dangling the statehood carrot in front of Palestinians, which follows the logic that a Palestinian state will emerge if Palestinians can show that they are mature enough to govern themselves through “good governance, economic growth and security.”

MARCH/APRIL 2016 2019 AUGUST/SEPTEMBER

The irony in this is staggering considering the World Bank’s own dismal internal track record of good governance and democratic practices given that every president of the bank since its inception has been an American.

In short, the result of the statehood plans has been an attack on the Palestinian public sector, increase in taxes on the lower and middle classes, decrease in taxes for large multinational corporations and capitalists, austerity measures, deregulation, rapid development of the private sector and a doubling of the Palestinian Security Services’ budget to further repress dissent and work as Israel’s security subcontractor in the West Bank. All the while the occupation continues, and illegal settlements usurp more Palestinian land.

Furthermore, the raison d’être of Kushner’s plan came out later in his speech.

Not only is he calling for a normalizing of relations between Israel and Arab states, but his plan also serves as a mechanism for Gulf states to divide up Palestine among themselves by presenting it as an untapped market that is theirs for the taking through investment opportunities.

In comparing Israel to Silicon Valley Kushner stated, “Israel has a thriving economy. Imagine if Silicon Valley was cut off from the rest of California. That’s kind of what we have right now in the Middle East. So obviously some form of peace would create prosperity, I think, for Israel, but also for everyone else throughout the region.” The takeaway, Kushner to the Khalijis (Gulf Arabs): the wonders of Israeli technology will enlighten and make everyone prosperous only if you throw Palestinian national aspirations under the bus.

Kushner presented his workshop as the “opportunity of the century.” This was not by accident. If Palestinians reject his plan, he can then fall back on the worn-out Abba Eban epithet of Palestinians never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity. According to Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the Blackstone Group, who

spoke after Kushner, Palestinians just need to come to their “senses.” Although, according to Mohamed Alabbar, the Emirati chairman of Emaar Properties, who was also on the panel with Schwarzman, the fact that Palestinians did not attend was of no concern to him and he went so far as to claim that he was Palestinian.

“Everyone of us, we are really Palestinian at heart because the Palestinian issue is our issue…but I feel like I represent them because you know, it is my story. I mean, Palestine and its people and the Palestine issue is something close to my heart. So today, I think we really represent them.”

Alabbar went on to claim that young people in the region are not involved in politics and they only want a better economic life. Speaking to them, he said if you follow our plan, “you’ll be smiling as you walk down the street,” because you’ll be so overcome with joy and gratitude for what we’ve built for you.

Anyone just needs to look at Beirut Souks in downtown Beirut, New Abdali in Amman, Rawabi in Palestine, and other urban centers across the Middle East that have been built by Gulf capital to know that the end result of Alabbar’s vision will be sterile, soulless urban ghost towns for the rich.

It has been well-reported that Kushner’s real estate development company has used slumlord-like tactics to evict low-income tenants from its properties in Queens and Baltimore. Complaints from current and former tenants and state agencies have ranged from Kushner Companies LLC charging improper and excessive fees, misallocating rent paid, issuing civil arrest warrants against their tenants, lying to city and state officials on their paperwork, and creating a hostile living environment on low-value properties they wish to renovate for rich clients and then sell at a premium.

Therefore, it is not a far stretch to believe that Jared Kushner, through his peace plan, will use similar tactics to further dispossess Palestinians from their own land. ■

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IRmep Polls, Telling Hard Truths Since 2014

Sixty-Eight Percent of Americans Would Reject Trump’s Mideast “Deal of the Century”

By Grant F. Smith ON JUNE 25-26 Jared Kushner orchestrated the “Peace to Prosperity” economic workshop in Bahrain. Kushner is President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and his senior adviser on negotiating a Middle East peace. The White House plan closely follows a strategy proposed by the late Israeli President Shimon Peres. Peres assumed integration of the Middle East through widescale economic development would induce all parties to successfully tackle more difficult final status issues of borders, territory and refugees at a later time.

Palestinian government officials have broken off contact with the Trump administration since its December 2017 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and relocation of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. They did not attend the conference, but some Palestinian businesspeople did.

While the “Peace to Prosperity” plan mentions the West Bank and Gaza, it makes no reference to Jerusalem. The financing for “Peace to Prosperity” is extremely speculative with no firm guarantees that any funding would materialize even if the Palestinians accepted.

It is unlikely the Trump administration’s upcoming “Political Plan”—which has been written but not released—will recognize the Palestinian right to return or establish a Palestinian state within pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital. The U.S. negotiating team members are essentially Israeli hardliners in all but domicile. Special Envoy for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt recently referred to illegal Israeli West Bank settlements as “neighborhoods and cities” that are not an obstacle to peace.

To gauge U.S. public opinion about the “Peace to Prosperity” plan, IRmep put a national sample of American adults in the shoes of Palestinian refugees, notably the 750,000 forcibly expelled during Israel’s creation and their descendants living in Gaza, West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. When asked the purposefully ambiguous question, “If you were expelled & resettled into a resource restricted area, would you fight to return or forfeit legal claims for a new life under a promised economic development plan?” a solid 68 percent of Americans said they would fight to return. ■

IRmep Poll: If you were expelled & resettled into a resource restricted area, would you fight to return or forfeit legal claims for a new life under a promised economic development plan?

Grant F. Smith is the director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington, DC. For more IRmep polls, visit https://IRmep.org/Polls.

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WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Source: IRmep representative poll of 1,450 American adults fielded through Google Surveys on July 11-21, 2019.

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MOHAMMED ABED/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Money is Not the Answer

Gaza on the Ground

By Mohammed Omer

Proud University of Palestine students celebrate during their graduation ceremony in Gaza City on July 13, 2019. Two out of every three youths face unemployment in the Gaza Strip due to the Israeli and Egyptian blockade.

FRUSTRATION AND DESPAIR surround generations of Palestinians in Gaza. The Gaza population grows, and pressure builds for those forced to live fenced-off lives. When President Trump’s senior adviser on the Middle East, Jared Kushner, unveiled a $50 billion stimulus package at the Peace to Prosperity workshop in Bahrain, some Western observers expected Gazans to jump for joy.

“But we were not excited because packaged money is not the long-term answer,” said Fouad Abdelaal, a 41-year-old vegetable seller in Khan Younis. As much as he needs cash to keep his family afloat, he realizes Gazans need more autonomy, border mobility and freedom to make their own independent way, earn long-term incomes and secure their own finances.

“Our identity and dignity should be safeguarded, or what remains of it,” he says, indicating that Gaza needs long-term investments to lift its battered economy and create sustainable jobs. “Hope is

Award-winning journalist Mohammed Omer reports regularly on the Gaza Strip.

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

something we are not allowed to have.”

Nisreen Daqqa, a 22-year-old from Gaza City, has another phrase to describe Gaza: “Walking dead.”

She is from a generation of Palestinians in Gaza, now finishing their education, who have spent their entire lives in the fenced-off Gaza Strip—unlike her parents, who remember a time when thousands of Palestinians worked in Israel.

“I have never met an Israeli in my entire life—how do you expect me to build peace with someone I don’t know?” she asked.

“Whether we like it or not, the Israelis are not going anywhere, just like Palestinians.”

There is little doubt as to the cause of the Palestinian malaise: the Israeli occupation, as the permanent state of contention it creates prevents Palestinians from living a normal, peaceful economic life.

“Come on guys, give us some breathing space! Now, as I finish my degree in ICT [information and communications technology], what are my options? I don’t want to live on handouts when I could

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earn my own salaryâ&#x20AC;? adds Daqqa.

Yet, this week in Gaza and the West Bank, 52,108 new students just passed their secondary school exams, according to the Palestinian Education Ministry.

Among the younger generation are more progressive minds who try to find a mutual, equal way forward. Young academics like Daqqa want to see positive change, yet the bad news is that the economy continues to crumble, and traditional Palestinian crafts and heritage are rapidly disappearing. More of Gazaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s poorest are pushed into homelessness, as they canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t afford rent and bills.

As Daqqa explains, she knows her future will likely be unemployment just like many of her peers who graduated a few years ago. Due to the Israeli and Egyptian blockade, 52 percent of Gazaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s labor force was unemployed in 2018, including two out of every three youths. Meanwhile, the annual gross domestic product of Israel is over $41,000 per capita, while the occupied lands generate only about $3,000 per capita each year, according to the World Bank.

PA TURNS TO JORDAN

As Gazaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s economy continues to collapse as never before, the Palestinian Authority is on an ongoing quest to economically detach itself from its occupier in response to Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s decision to cut tax revenues that are transferred to the PA each month. Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh, who visited Jordan on July 6, indicated that he is keen to deepen Arab ties to gradually disinvest from the occupation.

The Palestinian and Jordanian governments signed three MoUs on energy, health and transportation, and agreed to allow Palestinian patients to receive treatment in Jordanian hospitals, and Palestinian goods to access the Jordanian market.

Israel has announced that it will deduct the revenues it transfers monthly to the PA from tax collected on imports that reach the West Bank and the Gaza Strip via Israeli ports. This move angered the PA officials and economists, who note that the already financially strapped PA will suffer as a result.

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The World Bank has warned against the aggravation of the economic situation if the PA doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t receive the funds.

According to a World Bank report issued in April 2019, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Grants, financed from the World Bankâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own income and supplemented by trust funds contributed by donors, fund the Palestinian Authorityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s projects in water and sanitation, municipal, education and social protection sectors. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The lack of progress toward peace and reconciliation creates an unsustainable economic situation. The Palestinian internal polity is sharply divided between Gaza and the West Bank. Due to a steep deterioration in Gaza and a slowdown in the West Bank, the Palestinian economy witnessed no real growth in 2018,â&#x20AC;? the World Bank concluded. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Fresh graduates celebrating high secondary school achievement donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know what is waiting for them,â&#x20AC;? said Daqqa. â&#x20AC;&#x153;What a waste of talents of a new generation that could build and construct, if there were no walls and fencesâ&#x20AC;? she adds. â&#x2013;

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WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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baroudcx_13-14.qxp_From the Diaspora 7/24/19 7:19 PM Page 13

From the Diaspora

The Book of Palestine: National Liberation vs Endless Negotiations

By Ramzy Baroud

TSAFRIR ABAYOV/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

THOSE WHO ARE STILL HOPING that the new American agenda on Palestine and Israel is temporary or reversible should abandon this false hope. Washington’s complete adoption of Israel’s messianic, extremist policies regarding occupied Palestine has been a long time in the making.

And it is here to stay.

Despite the unmistakable clarity in American political discourse regarding Palestine, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is still trapped in a 25-year long, ineffectual political paradigm. Unable to move past their (L-r) U.S. Ambassador David Friedman, White House Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt and U.S. Senator Linddisproportionate resey Graham (R-SC) attend the June 30, 2019 opening of the City of David archeological and tourist project in the liance on American val- Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem. When tourists take an underground tour of the City of idation, and lacking any David, they never hear they’re walking in occupied territory or that Palestinian families were evicted to pave the real strategic vision of way for this tourist site. their own, PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his men are operating within a cliché-cenpath aimed at achieving Palestinian freedom, rights and territorial sovereignty. tered trajectory of a “negotiated peace”—a discourse that was, itself, invented and championed by Washington and its allies.

It is, rather, a book that is written by Washington, from which a brazen pro-Israel agenda has preceded the Donald Trump adNewly-appointed (not elected) Palestinian Prime Minister Moministration by decades. hammad Shtayyeh conveyed this very sentiment in his June 24 interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “If you look at the litThis is, in fact, the core ailment of Palestinian politics, as practiced by the PA. Throughout the years, the PA has received hunerature, if you look at the statements, our president has been working by the book,” he said. dreds of millions in American funds in exchange for sidelining the U.N. in favor of complete American hegemony over the so-called What book was Shtayyeh referring to? Certainly not the book “peace process.” Abbas’ recent attempts at reviving the role of of international and humanitarian law, which has devised a clear the U.N. and its affiliated institutions is a belated attempt at corRamzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of palestine Chronrecting a historical mistake. icle. His latest book is the last earth: a palestinian story (available What will it take for Shtayyeh and his boss in Ramallah to from AET’s Middle East Books and More). Baroud has a Ph.D. in abandon the American option and, instead, develop a rounded Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a non-resident strategy that is founded on national unity, democratic represenscholar at the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California. His website is <www.ramzybaroud.net>. tation and international solidarity? Much precious time has been august/september 2019

Washington report on middle east affairs

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But no one represents this blatant American realignment into the Israeli camp better than Ambassador Friedman who, in an interview with The New York Times on June 8, backed any future Israeli annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank.

A few weeks later, in a disturbing and highly symbolic gesture, the American ambassador carried a sledgehammer and broke open a tunnel that snakes underneath the East Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan. The tunnel, part of Israel’s expansionist policy in occupied Jerusalem, has already damaged the foundation of over 80 Palestinian homes.

The determined and gratified look on Friedman’s face spoke volumes about the “hysterical, erratic” and extremist U.S. foreign policy under Trump.

So what hope is left for the PA in Ramallah, now that Washington has taken all the political, financial and every other practical step to sideline Palestinians, to marginalize their rights and push them into submission? And what good will appealing to American sensibilities through CNN and other platforms do, considering that Washington’s strategy is deeply entrenched and irrevocable?

Much can be said about the Palestinian failure to change course when it became repeatedly clear since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 that Washington has no interest in pressuring Israel to end illegal settlement construction and respect (Advertisement) international law. Worse, while Washington paid lip service to “peace,” it supported the Israeli war machine, military occupation and settlement construction with billions of dollars.

While it is good that the PA is finally waking up to the fact that subscribing to Washington’s foreign policy book is Palestinian Medical Relief Society, a grassroots communitya historic mistake, mere awareness is based Palestinian health organization, founded in 1979 by simply not enough.

Palestinian doctors, needs your support today.

It is time for the Palestinians to write Visit our Website <www.pmrs.ps> to see our work in action. their own book, one that is guided by the concept of national liberation, not Mail your U.S. Tax-Deductible check to our American Foundation: endless negotiations; one that is predFriends of UPMRC, Inc icated on unity, not mortifying factionPO Box 450554 • Atlanta, GA 31145 alism; one that appeals to the whole global community, not to American For more information call: (404) 441-2702 or e-mail: fabuakel@gmail.com handouts. ■

lost subscribing to the one-sided American book, which has no room for a Palestinian discourse of national liberation, unconditional freedom and basic human rights.

While Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was referring to Palestinians as “hysterical and erratic,” following the June 25-26 Bahrain economic conference (see p. 8), U.S. Middle East “peace envoy” Jason Greenblatt was challenging the very terminology used by the entire international community regarding the illegal Israeli Jewish colonies in occupied Palestine.

“People [should] stop pretending [that] settlements, or what I prefer to call ‘neighborhoods and cities,’ are the reason for the lack of peace,” the American envoy told participants at the June 27 Israel Hayom Forum for U.S.-Israel Relations in Jerusalem.

For the record, the widely-circulated rightwing Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom, which sponsored the conference, is financed by pro-Israel American casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. The latter is known to be the primary advocate behind Trump’s misguided policies in Palestine, including Washington’s recognition of occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem as part of Israel’s capital.

Greenblatt is but one of several unabashedly pro-Israel American officials

14

who has taken the already biased U.S. foreign policy to a whole new low. This clique also includes former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley and Washington’s Ambassador to Israel David Friedman.

In an interview, also with Israel Hayom on June 11, Haley tried to assure Israelis that “Israel should not be worried” about having to make any political concessions in exchange for Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital or of Israel’s sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

“Through the Middle East plan [socalled Deal of the Century], one of the main goals that Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt focused on was how not to hurt the national security interests of Israel,” Haley said. “They understand the importance of security; they understand the importance of keeping Israel safe.”

While Haley’s, Kushner’s and Greenblatt’s statements can be viewed as part of the ever-skewed, pro-Israel language emanating from Washington, one must not be too hasty. The fact is, Washington has now fully embraced the Zionist Israeli discourse without the slightest attempt at playing the role of the impartial arbitrator.

It is as if Haley and company are now members of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s rightwing Likud party.

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History’s Shadows

From Right of Return To Right to Starve And Kill

By Walter L. Hixson

MUSTAFA HASSONA/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES

THE MAIMING AND KILLING of unarmed protesters amid the Great March of Return in Gaza reflects a long history of Israeli fear, hatred and indiscriminate violence directed at Palestinian refugees. Viewing the return of refugees as the ultimate threat to the purity of the “Jewish state,” Israel has for decades dehumanized refugees and when given the opportunity, as in Gaza today, killed and injured them with impunity.

As a militarized settler state, Israel has a long history of deploying indiscriminate violence and warfare as a first rather than a last resort, but it has always lashed out at refugees with a special venom. The process began with the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe in which the Zionist Kids are seen at Al-Shati Palestinian refugee camp in Gaza City, Gaza during World Refugee forces drove some 750,000 Palestinians Day on June 20, 2019. Israel and the U.S. are waging economic warfare against UNRWA. from their homes in what historian Ilan Pappé calls the “formative event in the modern history of the resolution of the refugee crisis. Presidents Harry Truman, land of Palestine,” yet one that “has ever since been systematiDwight Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy all recognized that cally denied” by the Israelis. some accommodation over the plight of the refugees would be Declaring in 1948 that the condition of hundreds of thousands necessary to settle the Palestine conflict, but Israel adamantly of Palestinian refugees “without food, clothing and shelter was refused even to discuss the issue. appalling,” the Swedish diplomat and U.N. mediator Folke “Seriously disturbed” by Israel’s refusal to enter into a reaBernadotte made the return of refugees to their homes a centersonable settlement, including “the question of Palestinian piece of his peace plan, which also entailed recognition of Israel refugees,” Truman threatened to withhold financial assistance, by the Arab states. The Zionist terror group Lehi, led by future but the Israel lobby quickly took command of the U.S. ConIsraeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, responded by ordering gress, rendering the Zionist state impervious to executive the assassination of Bernadotte, who was gunned down at a pressure. President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Jerusalem roadblock on Sept. 17, 1948. (Bernadotte, who Foster Dulles ran into the same problem. worked for the Swedish Red Cross during World War II, had Between the 1948 to 1956 wars, Israel fended off refugee rekept thousands of Jews out of concentration camps.) settlement proposals while at the same time carrying out a “freeDuring the first generation of the Palestine conflict—in sharp fire” policy that killed some 3,000-5,000 Palestinians on the borcontrast with today—the United States sometimes attempted derlands. Even the Zionist apologist historian Benny Morris acto play the role of honest broker, including many proposals for knowledges, “The vast majority of those killed were unarmed” refugees rather than guerillas—men and women seeking to return to their homes to retrieve property or renew cultivation of History’s Shadows, a regular column by contributing editor Walter L. Hixson, seeks to place various aspects of Middle East politics and fields that lay behind the illegally expanded Israeli border. diplomacy in historical perspective. Hixson is the author of Israel’s Israel and its U.S. lobby cemented a mendacious and dehuArmor: The Israel Lobby and the First Generation of the Palestine manizing propaganda line claiming, as David Ben-Gurion put it in Conflict (available from Middle East Books and More), along with 1960, that the refugees had “fled of their own volition” and were several other books and journal articles. He has been a professor of history for 36 years, achieving the rank of distinguished professor. therefore “not Israel’s responsibility.” The refugees were “not AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

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capable” of fitting into Israeli society, hence they would be “an injection of poison.” The Arab world, he charged, was merely “using the refugees as a political weapon.”

President Kennedy made a concerted effort to incorporate a settlement of the refugee issue as a key component of an overall peace plan. Kennedy hoped that his decision to begin to sell Israel advanced U.S. weaponry, which started with Hawk missiles in 1962, would incentivize Israel to compromise on the refugees and other issues, including nuclear non-proliferation. This exercise in wishful thinking ran into an iron wall of opposition erected by Israel and AIPAC. Kennedy’s envoy Joseph Johnson, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, spent months traveling the Middle East and analyzing the refugee question before submitting a plan in 1962 that would entail a limited number of refugees returning to Israel while the vast majority would resettle in other states in return for assistance and compensation. Johnson and U.S. diplomats built up support for the plan among Arab leaders in an effort to achieve an overall settlement of the Middle East conflict.

Israel, with critical backing in Congress and inside the White House from Jewish affairs adviser Myer Feldman, refused to consider the Johnson Plan even though it was heavily weighted toward the “great majority” of refugees being resettled outside of Israel. Ben-Gurion thanked Kennedy for the Hawk missiles, but as for the proposed refugee resettlement plan, he bluntly told the president, “We shall fight against it to the last man.”

Defeated by Israel and the lobby, Kennedy backed off on the refugee resettlement plan, essentially bringing an end to U.S. efforts to promote even a piecemeal right of return. Israel proceeded to create thousands of additional refugees by launching the aggressive war of June 1967 in which it seized and occupied the territories of Gaza, the Sinai, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.

Shattering hopes of a comprehensive set16

tlement, Israel chose to become an occupying colonial power thereby squandering an opportunity to trade land for peace.

FROM RIGHT OF RETURN TO RIGHT TO STARVE AND KILL

Until the current Trump administration, the United States did at least underwrite UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, which for decades has attempted to provide basic needs for the refugee ranks that have swelled to more than 6 million, the vast majority living in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and, of course, Gaza. Now Trump and his New York real estate sharks turned “diplomats” Jason Greenblatt and Jared Kushner, backed by super hawk John Bolton, have withdrawn U.S. support for UNRWA, which previously stood at about $300 million annually.

The U.S. decision is an effort to subvert international law, which mandates UNRWA support for the illegally dispossessed refugees. According to Amnesty International, even with the minimal support provided by UNRWA, for decades refugees have “been forced to live their entire lives in overcrowded camps in dire conditions and are denied access to essential services.” As Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Research and Advocacy Director for the Middle East and North Africa, points out, “The situation for Palestinian refugees is untenable and grows closer to breaking point with every year that passes. How much longer can Palestinian refugees be expected to be condemned to a life of suffering, deprivation and discrimination?”

Today U.S. and Israeli policies aim not merely to starve refugees but also to maim and kill those who attempt to resist. On May 14, 2018, Israel perpetrated a massacre of Palestinian protesters— another staple of Israel’s military policy since 1948—using advanced weaponry to kill 60 protesters and wound hundreds in a single day. The dwindling number of physicians able to treat the wounded described “one horrific injury after another” including massive open wounds, shat-

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

tered limbs and evidence of “bullet fragmentation and shots going through one body into another—clearly illustrating the danger of firing high-velocity live ammunition into a crowd of demonstrators.”

Not content to kill protesters, who despite absurd claims to the contrary posed no genuine threat to Israel’s “security,” Israeli forces deliberately targeted health workers and fired on ambulances. “Based on numerous interviews with victims and witnesses and corroboration of video footage in a number of instances,” the World Health Organization “found reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers intentionally shot health workers, despite seeing that they were clearly marked as such.”

Throughout its history Israel’s forces have been enabled to kill unarmed protesters, medical workers, and children with virtually no fear of consequences.

Massacres and shoot to maim or kill policies reflect the racist contempt for displaced Palestinians that have been promoted and legitimized since the Nakba.

While “serious human rights violations were committed which may amount to crimes against humanity,” according to U.N. investigators, the United States has warned that it will police and punish any effort to mobilize the International Criminal Court to challenge either U.S. or Israeli policies.

Those of us who have passed even a few hours at the squalid camps can only imagine what it would be like for the Madison Avenue Trumps, Greenblatts, or Kushners to take up residence in Gaza, Aida, Shatila, or any one of the scores of camps set up for people who have been ruthlessly driven from their homes and are daily deprived of the basic human rights of essential nutrition, running water, decent sanitation and rudimentary health care.

What kind of nation drives people from their homes, incarcerates and starves them in an outdoor prison, and maims and kills when they protest these inhumane conditions? Moreover, what kind of nation relentlessly supports and defends a nation that perpetrates such crimes against humanity? ■ AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

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United Nations Report

Leaked Report Accuses Top UNRWA Officials of Misconduct, Mismanagement and Worse EARLY IN JUNE, a file landed on my desk. It was a devastating exposé of the top management of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the agency that, since 1948, has toiled with the endless task of ameliorating the aftermath of the Nakba.

The Washington Report’s deadine was a long ways off, so I took it to Al Jazeera. Posing questions raised by the file proved akin to overturning a stone and seeing the denizens from underneath run for cover.

The confidential report, compiled by the ethics office of the agency, cited “credible and corroborated reports” that members of the “inner circle” at the top of UNRWA have engaged in “abuses of authority for personal gain, to suppress legitimate dissent and to otherwise achieve their personal objectives.” They “have engaged in sexual misconduct, nepotism, retaliation…and other abuses of authority.” In the face of questioning from myself and Al Jazeera to whom I took the story, no less than three people named in the report resigned before the end of July.

The file identified the inner circle as the Swiss national Pierre Krahenbuhl, commissioner-general since 2014; Deputy Commissioner-General Sandra Mitchell; Chief of Staff Hakam Shahwan; and Senior Adviser to the Commissioner-General Maria Mohammedi. It described the alleged conduct as “an enormous risk to the reputation of the U.N.” and recommended that “their immediate removal should be carefully considered.”

Since 2015, the report alleges, the named individuals have steadily consolidated power, leading to “management decline at UNRWA.” The situation deteriorated markedly from the start of 2018 when the United States cut funding and Krahenbuhl launched the “Dignity is Priceless” global fundraising campaign, which aimed to raise $500 million. It was established outside UNRWA’s Department of External Relations and Communications (ERCD) that usually conducts fundraising efforts, “contributing to the departure of several senior ERCD staff,” the report claims.

The report alleges that the “Dignity” campaign fell far short of its target, and “reportedly raised only modest amounts, with the vast majority of the agency’s new funding raised through ERCD—with the commissioner-general’s and a number of key member states’ active support.”

Among the many allegations, the core of the report was that the commissioner-general had overly close ties with his senior adviser, Maria Mohammedi, appointed February 2015. The position is funded by the Swiss government, but the cash-strapped refugee agency was alleged to have paid for extensive business class travel for her, despite U.N. rules restricting such privileges.

U.N. correspondent Ian Williams is the author of UNtold: the Real Story of the United Nations in Peace and War (available from Middle East Books and More).

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

ATILGAN OZDIL/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES

By Ian Williams

Pierre Krahenbuhl, commissioner-general for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), speaks during a press conference at United Nations Headquarters in New York, June 25, 2019.

The report says that after the appointment, it quickly became clear to staff in UNRWA’s executive office and the ERCD that their relationship went “beyond the professional.”

The relationship created a “toxic environment” for colleagues in the executive office and caused “frequent embarrassment for ERCD colleagues and others when dealing with member states,” including donor representatives and donors. The report also alleges that, following her appointment, Krahenbuhl took Mohammedi with him on “the vast majority of his business travels, using his authority to obtain waivers enabling her to travel business class with him.”

Krahenbuhl’s travel habits have been very similar to that of Erik Solheim, the UNEP executive director, who was recently forced to resign over similar excessive travel claims. Some senior UNRWA staff reported that “the commissioner-general was structurally away from his duty station of Jerusalem on duty travel—including protracted stays at the agency’s Amman headquarters,” which was his special adviser’s official duty station— while claiming daily allowances for 28-29 days per month. In November 2018, Krahenbuhl informed “one senior staff member that, from the beginning of year he had made 52 trips.” An exasperated former director called him a submarine: “Every now and then the commissioner-general surfaces for a couple of days to engage in public advocacy and/or attend meetings, after which

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he disappears into the unknown for protracted periods, during most of which he is incommunicado.”

The inner circle, as accomplices to such bending of the rules, used the leverage it gave them to interfere in appointments and harass those who stood in their way. The report concludes that, since 2015, they have steadily consolidated power, leading to “management decline,” but that situation deteriorated with the sharp reduction in funding.

In 2018, the U.S.’s decision to slash its contributions from $360 million to $60 million for 2018, and then cut its donations to zero for 2019, caused a funding crisis in UNRWA. The report claims that the crisis “served as an excuse for an extreme concentration of decision-making power in members of the ‘clique’ and in particular, the chief of staff; increased disregard for agency rules and established procedures, with exceptionalism becoming the norm; and continued excessive travel of the commissioner-general.”

It alleges that these developments led to an “exodus of senior and other staff” and a work culture “characterized by low morale, fear of retaliation…distrust, secrecy, bullying, intimidation, and marginalization…and management that is highly dysfunctional, with a significant breakdown of the regular accountability structure.”

Quoting dozens of senior staff both recent and current who substantiated its contents, the report went to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in December. And nothing happened. That is why UNRWA staff brought the report to me, in the hope that a reporter’s questioning would provoke some action. Its leakers considered that a speedy announcement of a firm response would lance the boil and deprive UNRWA’s many enemies of a weapon. They worried that as long as the report existed within the notoriously leaky U.N. headquarters, there was a strong risk that it would be “weaponized” against the agency by Israel or the United States.

Initially, S.G. Guterres’s office disclaimed any knowledge of the report, but then it transpired that it had, in fact, been passed on to the U.N.’s Office of Internal Oversight Services, which is investigating the allegations and also looking into previous charges.

For years, the United States supported UNRWA, partly out of conscience, perhaps at their complicity in the partition and expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland, but also as a sound geopolitical expedient— there were enough problems with disgruntled 18

Palestinians as it was, without scattering them homeless, uneducated and unfed across the Middle East. The agency was intended to be an ad-hoc response to a one-off contingency—yet it is still here 70 years later.

Since neither the victims nor the accomplices of the Nakba were prepared to admit that this was a permanent situation, the management of the agency has always been cobbled together on the hoof. It has no management board and its commissioner-general is only beholden to the U.N. secretarygeneral. It is funded by donations, not the regular dues of the member states, which has made longer term planning difficult.

And of course, recently, Likud’s pathological distaste for the Palestinians, now reflected by the Trump administration and many in Congress, has meant a relentless underfunding of its operations leading to the current cessation of all U.S. funding.

Even though the report had gone to the secretary-general, concerned UNRWA staff feared it would be sat on since, as Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch points out, “Guterres continues to walk on eggshells around the U.S. and other major powers,” being reluctant to publicly denounce China’s mass detention of Uighurs and to order investigations in sensitive areas. In the Middle East, that most sensitive area of all, he has been circumspect about Israeli actions in defiance of international law, in contrast to his quietly spoken but firm predecessor Ban Ki-moon. With the general predilection of U.N. officials to inaction as well, the concerned staff members felt that the secretary-general’s office would be reluctant to move unless prodded.

When we approached Stephane Dujarric, the secretary-general’s spokesman, he admitted, “An investigation of the allegations contained in the report you mention is ongoing. Until this investigation is completed, the secretary-general is not in a position to make any further comments on this matter,” adding, “As he has shown in the past, the secretary-general is committed to acting swiftly upon receiving the full report.”

In a reply to Al Jazeera, Krahenbuhl “unreservedly” rejected the characterization of UNRWA and its senior leadership set out in the extracts. He said, “UNRWA is aware that a report was submitted to the United Nations Headquarters, which is said to contain allegations against members of UNRWA’s staff.”

He added, “at the end of March 2019, I was notified that allegations against

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UNRWA would be investigated by the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS).

I have at all stages of this process instructed and afforded full cooperation with this investigation.”

Mohammedi told Al Jazeera she had “never seen” the ethics report and rejected the accusations about her conduct as “false” and “ill-intentioned.”

Chief of Staff Hakam Shahwan was described by many staff members as behaving like a “thug” who was increasingly seen as the de facto leader of UNRWA, the report alleges. It also suggested that he complicated UNRWA’s work in Gaza by being overly partial to the PA rather than what the agency describes as the de facto authorities.

The report charges that Shahwan undercut the work of field directors and had also “effectively taken over UNRWA operations in Jerusalem,” circumventing field office chains of command and “bypassing established procurement and financial processes and decision making.” It also alleged he was actually running the agency in the vacuum created by Krahenbuhl’s frequent absences. Shahwan was also accused of favoring the Palestine Authority/Fatah figures over what the agency calls the “de facto” Hamas administration in Gaza, complicating its work there.

In early July, Shahwan “was separated” from UNRWA after I contacted UNRWA about the report and within an hour received a pseudonymous email attempting to discredit the alleged author of the ethics report.

Tamara Al Rifai, UNRWA’s newly appointed spokesperson, told me, "UNRWA confirms that after receiving a copy of an anonymous email sent to you addressing the alleged author of the report and related matters, the agency undertook an immediate review and subsequently, one of its senior staff members was separated as a direct response to that breach." In a statement to Al Jazeera, the spokesperson confirmed that the senior staff member was Shahwan.

When contacted, Shahwan made no comment on specific allegations about his conduct but said his “resignation has no link whatsoever to any of the allegations in the report.” He boasted on his website that he was on paid leave until the end of his contract, which our informants told us runs until August 2020. When asked whether the cash-strapped agency was indeed paying his salary for a year, during which he would be contractually forbidden to talk Continued on page 24 AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

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The Nakba Continues

Jerusalem’s Cable Car Controversy: Making Palestinians Invisible

By Jonathan Cook

ALL COPYRIGHT JONATHAN COOK

IT IS THE ISRAELI governm e n t ’s l a t e s t a m b i t i o u s tourism project for occupied East Jerusalem: an aerial experience that has united planning experts, archeologists, architects, Palestinians—and even a tiny community of Jews—in protest.

A $55 million cable car is due for completion within two years, its destination the slopes just below the Old City, next to the al-Aqsa Mosque and the goldentopped Dome of the Rock shrine, two emblems of Jerusalem’s skyline. Some 72 cabins are expected to ferry up to 3,000 visitors an hour along wires above the heads of Palestinians.

The project’s goal, acChildren from the Karameh family play on the flat roof of their home in Silwan in East Jerusalem. Israel’s cording to critics, is related cable car project is planned to pass a few meters above their home. to neither tourism nor transport. It is to hide the local over the densely populated Palestinian parts of the occupied Palestinian population and their history from the millions of city. “The advantage for Israel is that visitors can be prevented tourists who visit Jerusalem each year, turning the ancient city from having any dealings with Palestinians,” he said. “The instead into a Jewish “Disneyland.” local population will be largely erased from the experience of Visitors will be channeled from the cable car into a comvisiting Jerusalem. pound run by Jewish settlers in the heart of the crowded “Tourists will pass over Palestinian residents, via the cable Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan. From there, they will be car, and then pass under them via the tunnels, minimizing the led by settler-approved guides underground, through tunnels time spent at street level where Palestinians are visible.” under Palestinian homes to the foot of the Western Wall.

Hanna Swaid, a planning expert and former Palestinian Plans show that visitors will even be able to shop in the tunmember of the Israeli parliament, agreed. “Israel is using technels, bypassing local Palestinian traders in the Old City marnology to change the city’s geography to emphasize Jewish ket who have long depended on tourism for their livelihoods. control and a Jewish narrative. It will parachute tourists to Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher with Ir Amim, an organization Jewish sites like the Western Wall and marginalize Muslim that campaigns for equal rights in Jerusalem, said the cable and Christian sites.” car was primarily a political project to cement Israel’s control The cable car has been fast-tracked, even though experts Jonathan Cook is a journalist based in Nazareth and a winner of the warn that it will damage both the skyline of a city holy to all Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. He is the author of three faiths and archeological sites revealing the origins of Blood and Religion and Israel and the Clash of Civilisations modern civilization. (available from AET’s Middle East Books and More).

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But equally significant, critics note, Israel’s far-right government and extremist settler groups view the cable car as a key weapon in their wider political struggle to block any possibility of a Palestinian state emerging with East Jerusalem as its capital.

In violation of international law, Israel has treated East Jerusalem as annexed territory since it occupied the city in 1967. More than 200,000 Jewish settlers have moved there over subsequent decades.

Palestinians are concerned, too, that the cable car will serve to tighten Israel’s control over access to the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, the highly sensitive Islamic holy site in the Old City over which Palestinians fear Israel is seeking to assert sovereignty. For decades, Israeli authorities have moved to weaken the control of Islamic religious authorities, the Waqf.

Jews believe the mosque is built over the ruins of an ancient temple. The Western Wall, which today supports the mosque compound, was originally a retaining wall of the long-lost temple.

In March Israeli security forces and Palestinians clashed repeatedly after Jewish settler groups, backed by the Israeli government, sought to prevent the Waqf from opening an area for Islamic prayer within the compound.

“It is clear everything that is being done by Israel is moving closer to the [alAqsa] compound, completing its encirclement,” said Tatarsky. “We even hear government ministers boasting as much.” Swaid agreed, adding, “The cable car looks suspiciously like another means for laying siege to al-Aqsa.”

According to opponents, the cable car is a sign of Israel’s growing confidence in making unilateral moves in Jerusalem in the wake of President Donald Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy there more than a year ago. The cable car project has been aggressively promoted by the Israeli tourism ministry, headed by Yariv Levin, an ally of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and Jerusalem’s mayor, Moshe Lion.

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According to official plans, dozens of cabins will run hourly along a nearly mile-long route from West Jerusalem, inside Israel’s recognized borders, to the occupied Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, just outside the Old City walls and in the shadow of al-Aqsa. Tourists will disembark in Silwan into a large archeological compound run by a settler organization called Elad that enjoys close ties to the Israeli government.

The Kedem compound, itself being fast-tracked, is the latest venture in the City of David complex, an archeological site that the settlers of Elad have been using for more than two decades to gradually seize control of the Palestinian neighborhood. From the Kedem center, visitors will be taken on tours to explore ancient Jerusalem, moving through ancient sewage tunnels that run under Palestinian homes and reach the walls of the al-Aqsa compound.

The plan has won fervent backing from the Trump administration. In late June U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and Trump’s Middle East envoy, Jason Greenblatt, wielded a sledgehammer to smash down a symbolic wall inaugurating the main tunnel, which has been renamed the Pilgrimage Road (see p. 13).

The participation of the two U.S. envoys in the ceremony offered further proof that Washington is tearing up the peacemaking rulebook. Ambassador Friedman called the City of David complex “an essential component of the national heritage of the State of Israel.”

Ending the occupation there would be “akin to America returning the Statue of Liberty.”

Additional plans for the cable car will eventually see it alight at other sites in occupied East Jerusalem. They include the Mount of Olives, which includes an ancient Jewish cemetery; the Church of Gethsemane, at the reputed site where Judas betrayed Jesus; and the Pool of Siloam, a bathing area referred to in both the Old and New Testaments.

Yonatan Mizrahi, director of Emek Shaveh, a group of Israeli archeologists

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

opposed to the misuse of archeology and tourism by Israel, said: “This is one of the world’s most important historic cities and its character needs to be preserved. No other historic city in the world has built a cable car—and for very good reason.”

Some 30 leading international architects—many with previous experience working on major Jerusalem projects— wrote to Netanyahu in March urging him not to pursue what they called “shortterm interests.” They argued, “The project is being promoted by powerful interest groups who put tourism and political agendas above responsibility for safeguarding Jerusalem’s cultural treasures.”

The letter followed a statement by 70 Israeli archeologists, architects and public figures against the cable car last November, when the project was put on a planning fast-track. They warned: “Jerusalem is not Disneyland, and its landscape and heritage are not for sale.”

One of the signatories, Moshe Safdie, an internationally renowned architect, (who designed illegal settlements and worked to make East Jerusalem Jewish) told the Israeli news website Ynet at the time: “Imagine a huge cable car flying over the Vatican and dumping tourists in front of St. Peter’s. It’s unprecedented.”

The project, noted Swaid, violates international law, which allows major changes in occupied territory only out of military necessity or for the benefit of the population under occupation. “Even in its own planning justifications, the Israeli authorities are clear the cable car is designed only for the benefit of tourists, Israeli developers and the settler groups overseeing it, not the local Palestinian population. In fact, it will serve to actively harm Palestinians in Jerusalem.”

Because of these concerns, a French firm, Safege, which worked on the initial feasibility study, pulled out in 2015, reportedly under pressure from the French government. In an apparent bid to ensure the project was driven through, the Netanyahu government changed the country’s planning laws to remove the cable car from the oversight of local and AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

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ALL COPYRIGHT JONATHAN COOK

regional planning bodies. It also ensured the public could not submit objections.

Instead the scheme has been treated as a major “national infrastructure” project, like a new railway line or gas pipeline. The more opaque national planning council passed the plan in June, after offering a highly curtailed period for lodging reservations. It now needs only formal approval by the government.

Swaid, now the director of the Arab Center for Alternative Planning, drew up reservations on behalf of the Supreme Religious Council of Muslims in Israel. Other critical comments were submitted by lawyers for the Palestinian neighborhood of Yonatan Mizrahi, an archeologist with Emek Shavek, points to the new exit point from the Silwan tunnel, Silwan, the archeologists of emerging at the foot of the Western Wall and below Al-Aqsa.

Emek Shaveh, the planning group Bimkom, a traders’ association in the Old City and a tour would never consent to the project,” he cable cars travel over houses, let alone a few meters above,” said Mizrahi. “It said. guides group.

The Israeli tourism ministry dismissed seems clear why in this case. Because The Karaites, a small Jewish sect whose ancient cemetery lies in the path the criticisms. In a statement, the min- the houses belong to Palestinians.”

Samer Karameh, a 24-year-old truck of the cable car, protested that the pro- istry said the cable car project was “a ject showed “contemptuous disregard for significant milestone in the promotion of driver, said everyone in Silwan was opthe dignity of the deceased and the Jerusalem and the strengthening of its posed to the cable car but he was shocked to learn that it would pass so Karaite community in general.” Benjamin status as a world tourism capital.”

Pressure is being stepped up on the close to his house. “That’s terrible,” he Kedar, a former chairman of the Israel Antiquities Authority, also lodged a residents of Silwan. The family of one of said. “We’ll lose all privacy. We won’t be the best-known activists there, Jawad able to open the windows without being protest.

The project had been developed with- Siyam, a community organizer, was seen by thousands of strangers. And I out any input from the Palestinian com- evicted from its home by Elad settlers in can’t see how it is safe to have these cars munity, the Waqf authorities at al-Aqsa July. Many dozens more Palestinian fam- travelling over the heads of our children.”

He added: “We have heard nothing or the international community, noted ilies have suffered a similar fate.

One of the homes in the direct path of from the municipality. It’s like they are Swaid. He said UNESCO, the U.N.’s educational, scientific and cultural arm, the cable car houses 20 members of the keeping us in the dark.” Like other resishould have been consulted because Karameh family. According to the plans, dents, Karameh said that, while the offiJerusalem’s Old City and its walls are a the cabins may pass only four meters cial goal was to make the area more acabove the flat roof where the family cessible to tourists, it would really be World Heritage Site. helping the settlers take over their neighThe immediate area around it, which hangs their laundry and toddlers play.

The columns needed to support the borhood.

Israel is actively developing alongside “We know we won’t benefit,” he said. the settlers of Elad, is supposed to serve project may also end up being driven into as a buffer zone to harmful development. the family’s garden, one of the few unde- “The authorities won’t give us a permit to “All these interested parties have been veloped spots in this densely crowded build anything here, so all the business excluded because Israel knows they neighborhood. “Nowhere in Israel do will go to the settlers.” ■ AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

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Special Report

We Go Back 800 Years: Palestinian Fights Settler NGO’s Takeover of Jerusalem Hotel

By Nir Hasson

GALI TIBBON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

A month ago, the [Israeli] Supreme Court ruled in favor of Ateret Cohanim, which purchased the Imperial Hotel from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem 15 years ago. The court rejected the Patriarchate’s claim that the deal was illegal. Ateret Cohanim’s legal victory made it the owner of two huge buildings in al-Khattab Square: the Imperial and the Petra hotels.

The last obstacle preventing the settler organization from taking possession of the buildings was evicting the residents, who also run the two hotels. Thus Dajani found himself on the front line in the battle against it. Ateret Cohanim didn’t dawdle. Within days of the court ruling, Dajani was served with two lawsuits, both on behalf of Richard Marketing Corp.—a shell company registered in the Virgin Islands, which was the legal entity through Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem Theophilos III (l) stands next to Palestinian Abu-Walid which Ateret Cohanim bought the hotel.

Dajani, July 11, 2019. Dajani’s family has run the Imperial Hotel at Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem’s The first suit demanded the premises Old City for the past 70 years. Christian leaders prayed for peace in Arabic, Greek and English, be evacuated. “To hand over the Imperial and protested the sale of properties owned by the Greek Orthodox Church to a Jewish pro- Hotel free of any person or object,” the settlement group in mainly Palestinian areas of annexed East Jerusalem. lawsuit states. The second suit demanded that Dajani pay Ateret Cohanim 10 million ABU-WALID DAJANI, 75, is embarking on what he calls the shekels ($2.8 million) in rent from 2005, when its agreement battle of his life: an effort to prevent the Imperial Hotel from with the Patriarchate was signed. That’s more than double the being closed down and taken over by the Ateret Cohanim oramount Ateret Cohanim paid—$1.25 million—to buy the whole ganization that runs a yeshiva and settles Jews in the Old City building with its 45 rooms, hotels and hallways. and East Jerusalem.

Dajani has the status of a protected tenant in the hotel, and The walls of the Old City of Jerusalem are visible through evicting a protected tenant is usually a long and arduous legal the window of Dajani’s office in the Imperial, seeming almost process, yet even he seems to realize he doesn’t stand much close enough to touch. The office walls bear pictures of former chance of beating Ateret Cohanim. “I’m not religious but I do Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and a young Jordanbelieve in God and sometimes miracles are needed,” he says. ian King Hussein, together with family pictures going back a He’s placing his hopes on international pressure on the govcentury. The hotel is located in a vast, grand building on Omar ernment to prevent his eviction.

Ibn al-Khattab Square, by the Old City’s Jaffa Gate.

His struggle has received support, albeit mainly symbolic, The struggle will determine the fate of the Old City’s central from the leaders of the Christian communities in Jerusalem. plaza, says Dajani and many others. “This is the heart of The Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III and other church Jerusalem,” he says. “I have to prepare myself for battle. My leaders visited the hotel and issued a forceful statement family has been living in Jerusalem for 800 years. That’s against the eviction. pages of history, and I want my name to be there. I will never “We cannot remain silent while access to our holy sites is give up. I am loyal and if I die, I will die loyal and happy.” threatened and the hope of a lasting peace is diminished. As a community of justice, we demand that the rule of law is upPublished in Haaretz July 13, 2019. Reprinted with permission. held, and stand united against any attempt to take church 22

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properties by unlawful measures or to forcefully evict innocent tenants,” the statement read.

“We warn against any such attempt, and we shall not fear to use all legitimate means to oppose and block this from occurring. We remain impassioned guardians of the status quo and will ensure that people of all faiths can flourish and thrive within the walls of this city.”

The patriarch’s inner circles are hinting that despite the Supreme Court ruling, they intend to take further legal action, and still have some cards up their sleeves.

THE ROYAL FAMILY

The Imperial Hotel was built in the 19th century by the Greek Orthodox Church to shelter pilgrims. It was the grandest hotel in Jerusalem in its day. It featured in photographs taken during the visit of Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II to the city in 1898, and in the ceremony marking the surrender to British General Edmund Allenby in December 1917 by the Turkish forces that occupied Jerusalem.

The hotel’s management changed several times during the first half of the 20th century but always remained under the ownership of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, which viewed it as a strategic asset in the city. In July 1948, during Israel’s War of Independence, Dajani’s father Mohammed Taher Daoudi Dajani signed an agreement to rent the building and relaunched it as the Imperial Hotel.

The Dajanis are considered part of the Palestinian elite in Jerusalem; the men of the family have always played key roles in the city’s economy and politics. “I remember when I was six, I came to visit my father at this office and he gave me lunch money to buy a sandwich,” Dajani recalls. “My childhood was here, in this building. In 1962, I came to tell my father that I got a scholarship to study hotel management in Switzerland. He threw me out because he wanted me to be a doctor or architect. I left with tears in my eyes, but I went to Switzerland anyway.”

After his studies Dajani took a job at the hotel and also founded the tourism school at Bethlehem University in 1973.

He headed the coordination committee on tourism during the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in the 1990s.

The hotel has been at the center of a AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

public and legal struggle since 2005. The news of its sale to Ateret Cohanim provoked an uproar in the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, leading to the unprecedented dismissal of the patriarch at the time, Irineos. In response, Irineos secluded himself in a tiny apartment in the Patriarchate building that he hardly ever leaves—although, in recent weeks, he’s been hospitalized.

The Patriarchate has always denied the deal, claiming in court that the transaction was fraudulent and key people in the church had been bribed. The signatory on the paperwork had been the Patriarchate’s financial adviser, Nikos Papadimas, who had allegedly been paid by Ateret Cohanim to promote the deal and fled the country immediately after sealing the agreement.

During the trial, a recording surfaced revealing a conversation between Papadimas and the head of Ateret Cohanim, Mati Dan, in which Dan confirmed a financial arrangement between the association and Papadimas. It later transpired that Ateret Cohanim had paid Papadimas $10,000 in cash some years after the transaction. The Patriarchate’s attorneys also stressed that Dan didn’t come to court to explain matters.

The Jerusalem District Court raised questions about the transaction, but ultimately approved it. Recently the Supreme Court did so, too. Jerusalem District Court Judge Gila Canfy Steinitz and the Supreme Court justices all mentioned their discomfort with Dan’s refusal to testify, but they accepted Ateret Cohanim’s position that the recording and other evidence did not prove corruption had taken place.

Steinitz accepted the organization’s view that the tape was inadmissible as evidence because nobody testified about its existence in court, and it might have been edited. Touching on the money paid to Papadimas, Ateret Cohanim said it was regular assistance the organization provided to people with whom it worked, and who had encountered financial difficulties.

In the Palestinian street and within the church, there are complaints about how the church handled its legal battle, but Dajani stresses that he has no complaints against the Patriarch, whose pic-

ture greets visitors at the entrance to the Imperial.

“If we were in America I could sue them for millions, but things work differently here,” Dajani says. “I have no doubt he’ll stand by me. We are in the same boat, and he knows it.”

SLEEPING PILLS

Since the Supreme Court ruling, Dajani has been consulting with lawyers, and also wrote a plea to Jordan’s King Abdullah, published in the al-Quds newspaper, to support the struggle.

He hopes to raise funds from the public for the fight against his eviction, stressing that if Ateret Cohanim wins, it could be the start of a domino effect.

“There are a lot of stores here. If they go from store to store, from person to person, some won’t be able to take the pressure,” Dajani says. “My children and I are standing by each other and we’re strong, but I’m afraid the other tenants will leave.”

The entrance to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem is at one end of the hotel and the entrance to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate is at the other. “Soon they’ll have to ask for permission to enter their own property. Ateret Cohanim is disrupting life for Jews, Christians and Muslims, and it must be stopped,” says Dajani.

In recent years he received several “direct and indirect” offers to voluntarily leave the hotel in exchange for a generous payment. “I could take the money but then I’d need ten sleeping pills to fall asleep at night, while today I only need two,” he says. “Or I could take the money and have a heart attack and die. If I take it, the family’s honor has no future. The Dajani name has no future.”

The lawyer representing Ateret Cohanim, Avraham Moshe Segal, presented an assessment of the property showing that the demand that Dajani retroactively pay 10 million shekels in rent is reasonable, and even on the low side, compared to what is accepted in the hotel industry.

According to the property assessment, annual rent should be 10 percent of the hotel’s price upon its acquisition 14 years ago, though it could have also been calculated based on its present value, which is much higher. ■

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United Nations Report Continued from page 18

about events in the agency, UNRWA claimed that we were wrong, but notably failed to correct any of the details about how long he was to be paid, citing staff confidentiality—which ironically Shahwan was fired for breaching over the Ethics Office Report.

A former UNRWA director, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Al Jazeera that according to the report, Deputy Commissioner-General Sandra Mitchell and former Chief of Staff Shahwan had previously worked closely over a number of years. The ethics report alleges two reported attempts in 2018 by Mitchell, through Shahwan and other staff, to secure a more senior appointment for her spouse, Robert Langridge. Mitchell’s spouse was appointed as a deputy director at UNRWA’s Jordan field office, effective October 2018.

The report alleges that Langridge “was appointed through an irregular recruitment process and in violation of the U.N. and

agency prohibition of conflicted spousal appointment.”

In a statement to Al Jazeera, Langridge said he categorically rejected the allegations. “I particularly resent and reject the notion that I was not qualified for the position. This is neither factual nor correct,” he said. However, the report’s allegations about Langridge were backed by several former colleagues, who wish to stay anonymous until the report is published.

Mitchell, a U.S. national, told Al Jazeera she “emphatically” rejected all the allegations. “There is a pending investigation and as a U.N. staff member, I am restricted from commenting on specific allegations nor do I wish to interfere in that process as this would violate rules and obligations that I am bound by as a U.N. staff member,” she stated. She resigned with immediate effect when facing questioning by U.N. investigators from the OIOS. Al Jazeera’s sources said that the author of and witnesses to the ethics report were trying to shield the agency and the U.N. in the hope that it would be acted upon, and only contacted the press when

HopeHasWings

they suspected it would be sat upon.

As the report says, there is “overwhelming” evidence that the carious interconnected behaviors of the CG, DCG, CoS and SACG amount to abuse of authority...The egregious use of the individuals’ positions of power is of such severity, presenting an enormous risk to UNRWA and to the reputation of the U.N., that their immediate removal should be carefully considered,” the report concludes. Since we started the questioning, three of them have gone.

Concerned staff are hoping the U.N. Secretary-General Guterres and member countries will take the opportunity to reform the organization’s structure and management to shield it from the inevitable Likud/GOP assault. But the commissionergeneral who assembled and directed the rapidly shrinking team is still there along with his special adviser. ■

This article was updated on July 31, 2019, after a whistle-blower contacted the Washington Report and supplied proof of one error, which is now corrected.

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Special Report

How NeoCon Billionaire Paul Singer Is Driving The Outsourcing of U.S. Tech Jobs to Israel

By Whitney Webb

PHOTO COURTESY GIVINGPLEDGE.ORG

WITH NEARLY 6 MILLION largely been the work of one AMERICANS UNEMPLOYED, leading Republican donor—biland regular bouts of layoffs in lionaire hedge fund manager the U.S. tech industry, major Paul Singer—who also funds American tech companies like the neoconservative think tank Google, Microsoft and Intel American Enterprise Institute Corporation are nonetheless (AEI), the Islamophobic and moving key operations, billions hawkish think tank Foundation in investments, and thousands for Defense of Democracies of jobs to Israel—a trend that (FDD), the Republican Jewish has largely escaped media atCoalition (RJC), and also tention or concern from even funded the now-defunct For“America first” politicians. The eign Policy Initiative (FPI). fact that this massive transfer Singer’s project to bolster Isof investment and jobs has rael’s tech economy at Ameribeen so overlooked is particucan expense is known as larly striking given that it is “Start-Up Nation Central,” largely the work of a single which he founded in response leading neoconservative Re- Paul E. Singer, billionaire founder of the hedge fund firm Elliott to the global Boycott, Divestpublican donor who has given Management (which specializes in distressed debt acquisitions), ment and Sanctions (BDS) millions of dollars to President launched Start-Up Nation Central, based in Tel Aviv, to deepen movement that seeks to use ties between Israeli and U.S. tech centers.

Donald Trump. nonviolent means to pressure Many of the top tech companies continue to shift investment Israel to comply with international law in its treatment of Palesand jobs to Israel at record rates even as they collect sizable tinians.

U.S. government subsidies for their operations while they This project is directly linked to Israeli Prime Minister move critical aspects of their business abroad. The trend is Binyamin Netanyahu, who in recent years has publicly menparticularly troubling in light of the importance of the tech sectioned that it has been his “deliberate policy” to have former tor to the overall U.S. economy, as it accounts for 7.1 percent members of Israel’s “military and intelligence units…merge of total GDP and 11.6 percent of total private-sector payroll. into companies with local partners and foreign partners” in Furthermore, many of these companies are hiring, as top order to make it all but impossible for major corporations and managers and executives, the members of controversial Isforeign governments to boycott Israel. raeli companies known to have spied on American citizens, Singer’s nonprofit organization has acted as the vehicle U.S. companies, and U.S. federal agencies, as well as numerthrough which Netanyahu’s policy has been realized, via the ous members of Israeli military intelligence. group’s close connections to the Israeli PM and Singer’s longThis massive transfer of the American tech industry has time support for Netanyahu and the Likud Party. With deep ties to Netanyahu, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and controversial tech companies—like AmWhitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including docs—that spied on the American government, this SingerGlobal Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st funded organization has formed a nexus of connections beCentury Wire, among others. She has made several radio and teletween the public and private sectors of both the American and vision appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Israeli economies with the single goal of making Israel the Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism. MintPress News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution. new technology superpower, largely at the expense of the AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

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American economy and the U.S. government, which currently gives $3.8 billion in annual aid to Israel.

RESEARCHED AND DEVELOPED IN ISRAEL

In recent years, the top U.S. tech companies have been shifting many of their most critical operations, particularly research and development, to one country: Israel. A 2016 report in Business Insider noted that Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple had all opened up research and development (R&D) centers in recent years, with some of them having as many as three such centers in Israel, a country roughly the size of New Jersey.

Other major tech companies that have also opened key operation and research centers in Israel include SanDisk, Nvidia, PayPal, Palantir and Dell. Forbes noted last year that the world’s top 10 tech companies were now “doing mission-critical work in Israel that’s core to their businesses back at HQ.” Yet, some of these tech giants, particularly those based in the United States, are heavily investing in their Israeli branches. For example, Intel Corporation, which is the world’s second largest manufacturer of semiconductor computer chips and is headquartered in California, has long been a major employer in Israel, with over 10,000 employees in the Zionist state. However, earlier this year, Intel announced that it would be investing $11 billion in a new factory in Israel and would receive around $1 billion in an Israeli government grant for that investment. Just a matter of months after Intel announced its major new investment in Israel, it announced a new round of layoffs in the United States.

Yet this is just one recent example of what has become a trend for Intel. In 2018, Intel made public its plan to invest $5 billion in one of its Israeli factories and had invested an additional $15 billion in Israeli-created autonomous driving technology a year prior, creating thousands of Intel jobs in Israel. Notably, 26

over a similar time frame, Intel has cut nearly 12,000 jobs in the United States.

While this great transfer of investment and jobs was undermining the U.S. economy and hurting American workers, particularly in the tech sector, Intel received over $25 million dollars in subsidies from the U.S. government.

A similar phenomenon has been occurring at another U.S.-based tech giant, Microsoft. Beginning in 2014 and continuing into 2018, Microsoft laid off well over 20,000 employees, most of them Americans, in several different rounds of staff cuts. Over that same time period, Microsoft has been on a hiring spree in Israel, building new campuses and investing billions of dollars annually in its Israel-based research and development center and in other Israeli start-up companies, creating thousands of jobs abroad. In addition, Microsoft has been pumping millions of dollars into technology programs at Israeli universities and institutes, such as the Technion Institute.

Over this same time frame, Microsoft has received nearly $197 million in subsidies from the state governments of Washington, Iowa and Virginia.

Israeli politicians and tech company executives have attributed this dramatic shift to Israel’s tech prowess and growing reputation as a technological innovation hub, obscuring Singer’s effort in concert with Netanyahu to counter a global movement aimed at boycotting Israel and to make Israel a global “cyber power.”

START-UP NATION CENTRAL AND THE NEOCONS

In 2009, a book titled Start Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, written

by American neoconservative Dan Senor and Jerusalem Post journalist Saul Singer (unrelated to Paul), quickly rose to the New York Times bestseller list for its depiction of Israel as the tech start-up capital of the world. The book—published by the Council on Foreign Relations, where Senor was then serving as adjunct senior

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

fellow—asserts that Israel’s success in producing so many start-up companies resulted from the combination of its liberal immigration laws and its “leverage of the business talents of young people with military experience.”

In a post-publication interview with the blog Freakonomics, Senor asserted that service in the Israeli military was crucial to Israel’s tech sector success. “Certain units have become technology boot camps, where 18- to 22-year-olds get thrown projects and missions that would make the heads spin of their counterparts in universities or the private sector anywhere else in the world,” wrote Senor and Singer. “The Israelis come out of the military not just with hands-on exposure to next-gen technology, but with training in teamwork, mission orientation, leadership, and a desire to continue serving their country by contributing to its tech sector—a source of pride for just about every Israeli.”

The book, in addition to the many accolades it received from the mainstream press, left a lasting impact on top Republican donor Paul Singer, known for funding the most influential neoconservative think tanks in America, as noted above.

Paul Singer was so inspired by Senor and Singer’s book that he decided to spend $20 million to fund and create an organization with a similar name. He created Start-Up Nation Central (SUNC) several years after the book’s release in 2009.

To achieve his vision, Singer—who is also a top donor to the Republican Party and Trump—tapped Israeli economist Eugene Kandel, who served as Netanyahu’s national economic adviser and chaired the Israeli National Economic Council from 2009 to 2015.

Senor was likely directly involved in the creation of SUNC, as he was then employed by Paul Singer and, with neoconservatives Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, co-founded the FPI. In addition, Dan Senor’s sister, Wendy Singer (unrelated to either Paul or Saul), long-time diAUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

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rector of Israel’s AIPAC office, became the organization’s executive director.

SUNC’s management team, in addition to Eugene Kandel and Wendy Singer, includes Guy Hilton as the organization’s general manager. Hilton is a long-time marketing executive at Israeli telecommunications company Amdocs and is credited with having “transformed” the company’s marketing organization.

Amdocs was once highly controversial in the United States after it was revealed by a 2001 Fox News investigation that numerous federal agencies had investigated the company, which then had contracts with the 25 largest telephone companies in the country, for its alleged role in an aggressive espionage operation that targeted the U.S. government. Hilton worked at Microsoft prior to joining Amdocs.

Beyond the management team, SUNC’s board of directors includes Paul Singer, Dan Senor and Terry Kassel— who work for Singer at his hedge fund, Elliott Management—and Raphael Ouzan. An officer in the elite foreign military intelligence unit of Israel, Unit 8200, Ouzan co-founded BillGuard the day after he left that unit, which is often compared to the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). Within five months of its founding, BillGuard was backed by funding from PayPal founder Peter Thiel and former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt.

Ouzan is also connected to U.S. tech companies that have greatly expanded their Israeli branches since SUNC’s founding—such as Microsoft, Google, PayPal and Intel, all of which support Ouzan’s non-profit Israel Tech Challenge.

According to reports from the time published in Haaretz and Bloomberg, SUNC was explicitly founded to serve as “a foreign ministry for Israel’s tech industry” and “to strength Israel’s economy” while also aiming to counter the BDS movement, as well as the growth of illegal Jewish-only settlements in occupied Palestinian territory.

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Since its founding, SUNC has sought to transfer tech jobs from foreign companies to Israel by developing connections and influence with foreign governments and companies so that they “deepen their relationship with Israel’s tech industry.” Although SUNC has since expanded to include other sectors of the Israeli “start-up” economy, its focus has long remained on Israel’s tech, specifically its cybersecurity industry. Foreign investment in this single Israeli industry has grown from $227 million in 2014 to $815 million in 2017.

In addition to its own activities, SUNC appears to be closely linked to a similar organization, sponsored by Coca-Cola and Daimler Mercedes-Benz, called The Bridge, which also seeks to connect Israeli start-up companies with large international corporations. Indeed, SUNC, according to its website, was actually responsible for Daimler Mercedes Benz’s decision to join The Bridge, thanks to a delegation from the company that SUNC hosted in Israel and the connections made during that visit.

TEAMING UP WITH ISRAEL’S UNIT 8200

Notably, SUNC has deep ties to Israel’s military intelligence Unit 8200 and, true to Start-Up Nation’s praise of IDF service as key to Israel’s success, has been instrumental in connecting Unit 8200 alumni with key roles in foreign companies, particularly American tech companies. For instance, Maty Zwaig, a former lieutenant colonel in Unit 8200, is SUNC’s current director of human capital programs, and SUNC’s current manager of strategic programs, Tamar Weiss, is also a former member of the unit.

One particularly glaring connection between SUNC and Unit 8200 is Inbal Arieli, who served as SUNC’s vice president of strategic partnerships from 2014 to 2017 and continues to serve as a senior adviser to the organization. A former lieutenant in Unit 8200, Arieli is the founder and head of the 8200 Entrepre-

neurship and Innovation Support Program (EISP), which was the first start-up accelerator in Israel aimed at harnessing “the vast network and entrepreneurial DNA of [Unit] 8200 alumni” and is currently one of the top company accelerators in Israel. Arieli was the top executive at 8200 EISP while working at SUNC. Another key connection between SUNC and Unit 8200 is SUNC’s promotion of Team8, a company-creation platform whose CEO and co-founder is Nadav Zafrir, former commander of Unit 8200. In addition to prominently featuring Team8 and Zafrir on the cybersecurity section of its website, SUNC also sponsored a talk by Zafrir and an Israeli government economist at the World Economic Forum, often referred to as “Davos,” that was attended personally by Paul Singer.

Team8’s investors include Google’s Eric Schmidt, Microsoft, and Walmart— and it recently hired former head of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command, retired Admiral Mike Rogers. Team8 described the decision to hire Rogers as being “instrumental in helping strategize” Team8’s expansion in the United States. However, Jake Williams, a veteran of NSA’s Tailored Access Operations hacking unit, told CyberScoop: “Rogers is not being brought into this role because of his technical experience ...It’s purely because of his knowledge of classified operations and his ability to influence many in the U.S. government and private-sector contractors.”

In addition to connections to Unit 8200-linked groups like Team8 and 8200 EISP, SUNC also directly collaborates with the IDF in an initiative aimed at preparing young Israeli women to serve in Unit 8200. That initiative, called the CyberGirlz Club, is jointly funded by Israel’s Defense Ministry, SUNC and the Rashi Foundation, the philanthropic organization set up by the Leven family of Perrier-brand water, which has close ties to the Israeli government and IDF. “Our aim is to bring the girls to this

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process already skilled, with the knowledge needed to pass the exams for Unit 8200 and serve in the military as programmers,” Zwaig told Israel National News.

Unit 8200 alumni who subsequently went on to found new companies and startups shortly after acquisition. Furthermore, due to the limitations of LinkedIn’s set-up, MintPress was not able to access the complete list of Unit 8200 alumni at these three tech companies, meaning that the eye-opening numbers found were generated by a relatively small sample.

This jump in Unit 8200 members in top positions at tech companies of global im-

JACK GUEZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

at the 2019 Cybertech conference in Tel Aviv, where he stated that Israel’s emergence as one of the top five “cyber powers” had “required allowing this combination of military intelligence, academia and industry to converge in one place” SEEDING AMERICAN TECH and that this further required allowing The connections between SUNC and Unit “our graduates of our military and intelli8200 are troubling for more than a few gence units to merge into companies reasons, one being that Unit 8200, often with local partners and foreign partners.” likened to the NSA, closely coordinates The direct tie-ins of SUNC to Netanyahu with Israel’s intelligence agency, the and the fact that Paul Singer has also Mossad, and is responsible been a long-time political for 90 percent of the intellidonor and backer of Negence material obtained by tanyahu suggest that SUNC the Israeli government, acis a key part of Netanyahu’s cording to its former compolicy of placing former milimander Yair Cohen. “There tary intelligence and intelliisn’t a major operation, from gence operatives in strategic the Mossad or any intellipositions in major technolgence security agency, that ogy companies.

8200 is not involved in,” Notably, just as SUNC Cohen told Forbes in 2016. was founded to counter the An organization founded by BDS movement, Netanyahu an American billionaire is has asserted that this policy thus actively promoting the of ensuring Israel’s role as a presence of former military in“cyber power” is aimed at intelligence officers in foreign creasing its diplomatic power Yaniv Bar (l) and Udi Cohen, former Israeli intelligence officers and companies, specifically Amer- founders of the start-up Aclim8, demonstrate their co-developed “COM- and specifically undermining ican companies, while also BAR” all-in-one hiking tool for “weekend warriors,” at their office in the BDS as well as the United promoting the transfer of jobs northern Israeli Kibbutz of Maayan Tzvi, May 21, 2018. Israel's military Nations, which has repeatis an incubator for future high-tech firms started by former soldiers. and investment to that same edly condemned Israel’s country. government for war crimes Particularly troubling is the fact that portance is actually a policy long pro- and violations of international law in relasince SUNC’s founding, the number of moted by Netanyahu, whose long-time tion to the Palestinians. former Unit 8200 members in top posi- economic adviser is the chief executive BUILDING THE BI-NATIONAL tions in American tech companies has at SUNC. During an interview with Fox SURVEILLANCE STATE skyrocketed. Based on a non-exhaustive News last year, Netanyahu was asked analysis conducted by MintPress of over by Fox News host Mark Levin if the large To sum up, a powerful American billion200 LinkedIn accounts of former Israeli growth seen in recent years in Israel’s aire has built an influential organization military intelligence and intelligence offi- technology sector was part of Ne- with deep connections to AIPAC, with an cers in three major tech companies, nu- tanyahu’s plan. “That’s very much my Israeli company that has been repeatedly merous former Unit 8200 alumni were plan,” Netanyahu responded. “It’s a very investigated for spying on the U.S. govfound to currently hold top managerial or deliberate policy.” He later added that ernment (Amdocs), and with the elite Isexecutive positions in Microsoft, Google “Israel had technology because the mili- raeli military intelligence Unit 8200 that and Facebook. tary, especially military intelligence, pro- has used its influential connections to the The influence of Unit 8200 on these duced a lot of capabilities. These incredi- U.S. government and the private sector to companies very likely goes deeper than bly gifted young men and women who dramatically shift the operations and this non-exhaustive analysis revealed, come out of the military or the Mossad, make-up of major companies in a critical sector of the American economy. given that many of these companies ac- they want to start their start-ups.”

Continued on page 30 quired several Israeli start-ups staffed by Netanyahu further outlined this policy 28

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Special Report

Elbit Systems: Bringing Israeli Apartheid to The U.S. Mexican Border

By Stephen Welty

JACK GUEZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

THE SAME RACIST AND XENOPHOBIC logic that prevails in Israel’s violent response to the Great March of Return is also evident on the United States’ militarized southern boundary area with Mexico. Events in both Gaza and on the Mexican border reveal the global reach of Elbit Systems, an Israel-based technologies conglomerate spanning multiple continents.

Elbit’s dedication to hyper scrutiny and criminalization under the euphemism of “border patrol” is apparent, whether in Gaza, the West Bank or the United States. Advocates for Palestinian rights, migrant rights and privacy rights have a transnational mission to challenge inherently intrusive and repressive means SupervisIR, a ground-based infrared surveillance system made by Israeli company Elbit such as those employed worldwide by Systems, is unveiled to journalists in Israel on June 8, 2016, a week prior to its presentation Elbit and the governments who contract at the Eurosatory defence and security international exhibition. with the company.

While Elbit generates most of its revenue in North America, mobility through the apartheid wall, a network of militarized it is also the preeminent hardware and software provider for checkpoints, and other technologies of “security” and control.

Israeli “defense and homeland security” industries. The conElbit’s systems, including Peregrine and the mobile/relocatglomerate specializes in “intelligence, surveillance and reconable surveillance systems, anchor “security” in the West Bank naissance” services. as well as the U.S.-Mexico border.

In the summer of 2017, American officials developed a faElbit harnesses “big data” and other “data streams” and vorable impression after conducting an on-site analysis of marries them to defense hardware to scoop up and catalog methods pioneered by Elbit for monitoring the border between details of whatever its array of sensors, monitors and computEgypt and Gaza. A few months later, in September, Elbit publiers might freely appraise. Unfettered “data streams” can and cized an agreement increasing the number of “radar and surare put to a variety of pernicious uses in the hands of the Deveillance towers” at the boundary between the United States partment of Homeland Security and the U.S. Armed Forces. and Mexico, beefing up a $145 million agreement from 2014.

With the various publics kept in the dark regarding what is catIn addition to “border security,” Elbit Systems is also heavily alogued, the capacity for government institutions to criminalize involved in the maintenance and monitoring of Israel's occupapeople based on this data is maximized. tion of the West Bank. It is part of a consortium of companies The Peregrine system can connect to an assortment of collaborating on repressive policies that confine Palestinian monitors and “motion systems” at borders, though these systems, which can be affected by wind and other factors, are unStephen Welty holds a Master’s in Middle Eastern Studies from the reliable. They can produce misattribution and responses that University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research for Friends can prove dangerous to a readily criminalized population. of Sabeel North America aims to expose the Israeli occupation of Elbit employs “truck mounts” with heat analyzing cameras Palestine and global militarization. He thanks FOSNA staff and Allison Deger of Mondoweiss for their contributions to this article. paired to vehicles that surveil borders. These devices compleAUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

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ment Elbitâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;driverlessâ&#x20AC;? motorized scrutiny that has surveilled the boundary dividing Israel and the Gaza Strip â&#x20AC;&#x153;since at least 2009â&#x20AC;? and the West Bank as of December 2015. A â&#x20AC;&#x153;mounted surveillance systemâ&#x20AC;? also operates on the U.S.Mexican border.

Elbitâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s E-merge system subscribes to the same â&#x20AC;&#x153;data streamâ&#x20AC;? philosophy of massive â&#x20AC;&#x153;cyber-scoopâ&#x20AC;? that has gotten online corporations like Amazon and Facebook, and even the National Security Administration, into trouble with the court of public opinion. This philosophy is integrated with both the apartheid wall and the Integrated Fixed Towers, and it works to stifle mobility and promote repression in Palestine. A public already aroused against Facebookâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s involvement with Cambridge Analytica and against the NSA cyber-scoop of online bustle, should also be concerned about the Elbit framework for invading the privacy of those most likely to be criminalized by racist states.

As a powerful transnational conglomerate, Elbit can strike at the human rights of residents and migrants near the U.S.Mexico border and throughout the West Bank and Gaza. Through its methods of data scooping and â&#x20AC;&#x153;automaticâ&#x20AC;? surveillance, Elbit is poised to heighten its universal assault on human rights.

Anyone who backs Palestinian rights, migrant rights or privacy rights should oppose the Elbit corporation. â&#x2013;

Billionaire Paul Singer Continued from page 28

Further consider that U.S. government documents leaked by Edward Snowden have flagged Israel as a â&#x20AC;&#x153;leading threatâ&#x20AC;? to the infrastructure of U.S. financial and banking institutions, which use much of the software produced by these top tech companies, and have also flagged Israel as a top espionage threat. One U.S. government document cited Israel as the third most aggressive intelligence service (Advertisement)

against the U.S. behind Russia and China. Thus, Paul Singerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pet project in Start-Up Nation Central has undermined not only the U.S. economy but arguably national security as well.

This concern is further exacerbated by the deep ties connecting top tech companies like Microsoft and Google to the U.S. military. Microsoft and Google are both key military contractors. Microsoft is set to win a lucrative contract for the Pentagonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cloud management and has partnered with the Department of Defense to produce a â&#x20AC;&#x153;secureâ&#x20AC;? election system known as ElectionGuard that is set to be implemented in some U.S. states for the 2020 general election.

Top U.S. tech companies have filled executive positions with former members of Israeli military intelligence and moved strategic and critical operations to Israel, boosting Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s economy at the expense of Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. SUNCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s role in this marked shift merits the deepest scrutiny. â&#x2013;

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Special Report

What City and State Leaders Got Wrong in Israel this Summer

By Dale Sprusansky

PHOTO CREDIT JACK GUEZ /AFP/GETTY IMAGES

GOVERNORS AND MAYORS, regardless of their party affiliation, all run on one shared platform: economic prosperity. This summer, several state and city leaders traveled to Israel with the promise that their trip would bring back abundant economic opportunities for their constituents in the forum of new technological, medical, scientific and educational cooperation.

Some leaders, such as Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, billed their trip as a purely apolitical economic mission, while others, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, used their trip as an opportunity to score political points by extolling the moral virtues of the State of Israel.

Regardless of how they framed their trip, every leader who participated in a junket to Israel this summer in one way or another eschewed human rights in the name of economic opportunity and/or scoring political points. Israel New York Governor Andrew Cuomo marches in New York City’s “Celebrate Israel may be a powerhouse of innovation and devel- Parade” on June 2, 2019, a few weeks before he led a state delegation to Israel. opment, but it is also a serial violator of human ergy, health care, transportation and—most disturbingly— rights and international law. Israel uses its image as a place drone technology. Cuomo should know that Israeli drone techof technological innovation, prolific religious history and abunnology is often perfected by using Palestinians in Gaza as undant natural beauty as a means to mask its well-documented willing lab rats. One must wonder what benefit Cuomo sees in and ongoing colonial project in Palestine. By participating in strengthening ties with such morally dubious businesses. economic missions to Israel, state and local leaders are acCuomo also used his trip to equate the fight against antitively collaborating with the country’s efforts to whitewash and Semitism with the need to support Israel. Leading the annual mask this reality.

“Celebrate Israel Parade” in New York City prior to his deparThe following is an analysis of how Bowser, DeSantis and ture, Cuomo proclaimed, “New York stands with Israel. We are New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s summer trips to Israel were all Jewish today.” In stating this, Cuomo committed the elefilled with a combination of self-deception, irony and shamementary mistake of conflating the State of Israel with Judaism. less political pandering.

While Israel officially classifies itself as the “nation-state of the CUOMO’S INCONSISTENT VALUES Jewish people,” many Jews around the world reject such a desCuomo took a quick jaunt to Israel in late June, with two stated ignation. With good reason, many Muslim, Druze and Christian goals: strengthening Israel-New York business ties and showing citizens of Israel view such a classification as an overt attempt solidarity with the Jewish people following a recent spree of to erase or minimize their presence in the country. anti-Semitic incidents in his state.

It’s estimated that 75 percent of Americans are Christian, The governor boasted upon his return that the trip helped while the same percentage of Israeli citizens are Jewish. secure new business relationships pertaining to renewable enWould Cuomo ever pronounce, “Today we are all Christian” on the Fourth of July? Of course not, as Cuomo and the Democratic Party regularly fight against right wing attempts to equate Dale Sprusansky is managing editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

Christianity with the American ideal.

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Cuomo earlier this year delivered a vociferous denunciation of religion interfering with the civil state. After passing legislation permitting expansive abortion rights in New York, Cuomo, a Catholic, penned a defense of the legislation in the New York Times in which he stated, “I do not believe that religious values should drive political positions. The country cannot function if religious officials are dictating policy to elected officials.” While such sentiments deeply displease his bishop, they are not necessarily contrary to the American political ethos. When it comes to Israel, however—a country which is equally, if not more, religiously diverse than the U.S.—he seems to see no problem with equating the majority religion with the essence of the country, or with acquiescing to the idea that the country’s majority religion ought to enjoy preferential status.

By endorsing ethno-religious nationalism, Cuomo is not working to fight antiSemitism. Rather, he is actively endorsing the type of discriminatory thinking that fuels the ideology of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism and other forms of hate. Cuomo billed his trip as apolitical, but by using language that mirrors Israel’s 2018 nation-state law—which enshrines Jews as first-class citizens and Arabs as second-class citizens—he was indeed making a political statement: there is no problem with Israel prioritizing religious identity over national identity and equal rights.

BOWSER’S IRONY-FILLED TRIP

Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington, DC, also visited Israel in late June. According to the mayor’s office, the purpose of the five-day trip was to “attract technology firms, establish educational partnerships and promote Washington, DC as a destination for investment and tourism.”

Bowser also signed a memorandum of understanding between the DC Chamber of Commerce and the Israel-America Chamber of Commerce and spoke at Tel Aviv University’s Cyber Week event.

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Like Cuomo, Bowser is a long-time supporter of Israel. The mayor always extends a warm welcome to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) annual conference at the city’s convention center. She has also joined other U.S. politicians in signing a letter condemning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The city’s police department also regularly attends training programs in Israel that many believe encourage law enforcement to adopt an overly aggressive (and often deadly) militarized approach to local policing.

Several local organizations, including Jewish Voice for Peace, If Not Now, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Black Lives Matter signed an open letter urging the mayor not to go on the trip. “This is both a shameful endorsement of Israel’s human rights violations against Palestinians and a slap in the face to DC residents,” the letter said.

“We demand you refuse any exchange trips to Israel, which support and endorse brutal oppression against Palestinians as a model for DC.” At an event celebrating Arab American Heritage Month in April, several youth activists publicly confronted the mayor and urged her not to participate in the delegation.

Bowser’s trip, like Cuomo’s, was rife with irony. The mayor’s effort to promote Israeli tourism to the nation’s capital may seem benign, but it becomes borderline outrageous once one recalls Israel’s treatment of many Americans seeking to enter the country. The most fundamental outrage, of course, is that Israel denies Palestinian refugees the right of return to their own land. The country also has a penchant for harassing Palestinian- and other Arab- Americans at its ports of entry, and even frequently denies entry to Americans who criticize the country’s human rights record (especially if they are of Arab or Middle Eastern descent).

Elliott L. Ferguson II, president and CEO of Destination DC, which promotes tourism to the nation’s capital, said, “Ensuring that visitors feel welcomed in our

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city continues to be a top priority as overseas visitation is extremely important for us, especially from an economic perspective.” Before encouraging Israelis to visit DC on United Airlines’ new Washington-Tel Aviv nonstop flight, the mayor and her city agencies ought to compel Israel to let DC residents of Palestinian heritage and defenders of Palestinian human rights enter Israel without facing harassment and/or denial of entry.

Bowser also signed of a memorandum of understanding between the Washington, DC-based Children’s National Health System and Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa. The agreement “will encourage collaboration to develop innovative ideas that improve the health and wellbeing of children,” the mayor’s office said.

While Bowser was preparing her AIPAC remarks this March, Brad Parker of Defense for Children InternationalPalestine spoke at the annual Israel lobby conference sponsored by this magazine and the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy about the ways Americans can help the 700 Palestinian children that are prosecuted in Israeli military courts every year. According to DCI-Palestine, 75 percent of those children report suffering some form of abuse during their detention.

The Rambam Health Care Campus may help the well-being of children in the nation’s capital, but one cannot help but see the irony in Israel seeking to export ways to improve the well-being of children while it regularly abuses Palestinian children in the West Bank and routinely kills and maims children in Gaza.

DESANTIS’ ISRAEL OBSESSION

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ late May trip to Israel was an overtly political affair.

DeSantis, who promised to be “the most pro-Israel governor in America,“ has long been obsessed with Israel.

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ject.” In 2017, DeSantis appeared along- his trip into a political stunt. He began on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu side Middle East Forum founder and no- the trip by signing in Jerusalem anti- during his trip. “I think [Netanyahu] has torious Islamophobe Daniel Pipes on Semitism legislation that critics contend been a really strong leader,” he said. “He Capitol Hill at the launch of the Israel Vic- will stifle free speech in Florida schools gave a great speech when I was in Contory Caucus. The goal of the “Israel Vic- by conflating legitimate criticism of Israel gress to a joint session and really everytory” movement is to end the peace with anti-Semitism. thing he said about that Iran deal proved process and declare a definitive Israeli The governor also held a controversial true. I told him after that speech I had so victory over Palestinians. The Middle cabinet meeting at the U.S. Embassy in many constituents, who said, ‘Heck, why East Forum’s “Israel Victory Project” on- Jerusalem that drew a legal challenge don’t we elect Netanyahu here?’ So, if it line explainer makes their racist agenda from a watchdog group and several (typi- doesn’t work out for him, I think he probexplicit. “Palestinians need to pass cally pro-Israel) Florida newspapers, al- ably could get elected in the United through the bitter crucible of defeat to be- leging that the meeting violated a state States if he wanted to.” come a normal people whose parents law requiring government meetings be SINGLING OUT ISRAEL? stop celebrating their children becoming open to the public. A judge dismissed the Critics are likely to point out that it is unsuicide terrorists and which prefers to lawsuit. help itself rather than harm Jews,” it says.

DeSantis also openly heaped praise fair to single out Israel when U.S. lead(Advertisement) ers forge economic deals This is the type of organizawith numerous countries tion DeSantis, the leader of that have appalling human the country’s third largest rights records. Indeed, state, openly embraces.

China, the U.S.’ largest During the 2018 gubernatrading partner, is an egretorial general election camgious human rights violator. paign, DeSantis regularly In his ongoing trade war boasted about his pro-Israel with Beijing, President Doncredentials and continually ald Trump has repeatedly accused his Democratic opraised the issue of intellecponent Andrew Gillum of tual property theft, but has befriending anti-Semites never raised the most due to his association with pressing issue—China’s the Dream Defenders, a systematic targeting and Miami-based civil rights ordetention of millions of ganization that works to end Uighur Muslims in its westprivatized prisons and enern Xinjiang region. dorses the BDS movement.

Israel clearly isn’t the only DeSantis’ delegation of alPlaygrounds for Palestine is a project to build playgrounds for our chilcountry where U.S. leaders most 100 legislators, cabinet dren. It is a minimal recognition of their right to childhood and creative overlook human rights vioofficials and business leadexpression. It is an act of love. lations in favor of pursuing ers professed the standard Playgrounds for Palestine (PfP) is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit organieconomic and political opgoals of other official Israel zation, established in 2001. We’re an all-volunteer organization (no paid portunities. However, if junkets: new investment opstaff) that raises money throughout the year to construct playgrounds and nothing else, it is yet anportunities, tourism promofund programs for children in Palestine. other reminder that political tion, higher education collaband economic gain often oration and technological Selling Organic, Fair Trade Palestinian olive oil is PfP’s principle source of fundraising. is comes at the expense of and scientific ventures. Lobyear, PfP launched AIDA, a private label olive “invisible” and forgotten byists, including Sheldon oil from Palestinian farmers. Please come by and people we conveniently Adelson (who donated more taste it at our table. overlook. Be it China, Israel than $800,000 to DeSantis’ We hope you’ll love it and make it a staple in your pantry. or any other country, it is 2018 campaign), also joined time for U.S. leaders to put the governor on the trip.

For more information or to make a donation visit: • people ahead of politics and DeSantis, unlike Cuomo https://playgroundsforpalestine.org • P.O. Box 559 Yardley, PA 19067 money. ■ and Bowser, openly turned AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

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Special Report

Takoma Park Withstands Pressure to Cancel “Occupation of the American Mind”

Audience members, including both protesters and supporters, mingle outside the Takoma Park community center, July 23. 2019.

THE CITY OF TAKOMA PARK, MD, founded in 1883 on the DC border, lived up to its reputation as a progressive and inclusive place to live on July 23, 2019. Home to artists and activists who reside in Victorian homes on tree-lined streets, or in a cluster of high-rise apartments, Takoma Park is also known as “Azalea City” or “The Berkeley of the East.”

In the 1960s the city’s future mayor, civil rights activist Sammie Abdullah Abbott (whose parents were Syrian Christian refugees), halted freeway construction that would have cut the city in two and demolished 471 homes. Abbott succeeded in replacing the proposed highway with a Metrorail line stop.

Takoma Park continued its political activism throughout the 1980s, declaring itself to be a nuclear-free zone and a sanctuary for Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees. It was also the first city in the U.S. to extend voting rights to 16- and 17-year-olds in city elections.

Takoma Park showed its progressive spirit and captured new headlines by refusing to cave to a feverish campaign led by the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of Greater Washington demanding the cancellation of the June 13 screening of “The Occupation of the American Mind.” The documentary was scheduled to show at the Takoma Park Community Center as part of the city’s free-to-the-public film series, art exhibitions, lectures, poetry Delinda C. Hanley is executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

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readings and performances. The city postponed the screening for a month until the city could “create a space for conversation,” after the JCRC outcry, according to Takoma Park spokeswoman Donna Wright. She added, “We didn’t want to censor the film.”

Takoma Park’s Arts and Humanities staff hired Theo Brown, who works for Public Engagement Associates, to moderate a panel discussion, as well as audience questions after the film.

Four policemen, including the police chief were asked to be on hand in case things got ugly. Then they invited a variety of panelists to give their reactions after the screening.

The JCRC was the first to refuse to appear. Rabbi Maharat Ruth Friedman of Ohev Shalom Synagogue was scheduled to participate in the discussion but withdrew right before the event. Matthew Mayers of J-Street and Taher Herzallah of American Muslims for Palestine made themselves available to take questions from the audience after the screening. Moderator Brown read statements and letters from the furious critics who refused to attend.

The film, released in 2016, narrated by Pink Floyd founder and BDS supporter Roger Waters, takes a critical look at Israel’s public relations war in the United States. In the film, experts, including Jewish Americans, explain how the U.S. media, unlike most international media, skews public opinion in favor of Israel by omitting the Palestinian story.

The city screened the 45-minute version instead of the full 84minute film to allow time for discussion, but both versions are

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STAFF PHOTO D. HANLEY

By Delinda C. Hanley

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available for free on the internet <www.occupationmovie.org>. The film begins with clips from Israel’s 2014 attack on Gaza and exposes the way Israel worked to produce media spin. It reveals the Israeli government’s efforts to improve public relations after a public backlash from its 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Tel Aviv commissioned Frank Luntz, an American public relations consultant who helped influence Republican campaigns, to come up with a strategy to sell Israeli military actions to the Americans who bankroll it. Luntz produced a Global Language Dictionary that is still used today to frame the Israeli narrative.

Luntz advised supporters to always portray Israeli military action as self-defense.

Speakers should focus on terror, not territory. Luntz realized that Israel couldn’t make heart-rending photos from Lebanon and Gaza go away, but it could saturate the media with talking points to make Americans believe that Palestinians deserved whatever Israel hit them with.

Any criticism of Israel by non-Jews is labeled anti-Semitic and only “self-hating” Jews disapprove of apartheid and the occupation of Palestinian land, according to the media experts quoted in the film.

When a reporter, like Ayman Mohyeldin from NBC, shows empathy for children slaughtered playing ball on the beach, supporters are asked to demand that he is removed from Gaza. When Bob Simon or Mike Wallace dare to criticize Israel on “60 Minutes” they are described as self-hating Jews.

“The Occupation of the American Mind” is so eye-opening that it is no wonder that the JCRC and its supporters tried their best to censor it—proving the allegations put forth in the documentary. The funny thing is that it’s been shown in churches, including the National Cathedral, and on college campuses throughout the country without igniting this kind of a storm.

Maryland State Senator Ben Kramer (D) denounced the screening, writing in a letter to the mayor and city council, “What is next on the agenda….Should we reflect on 1933 Germany for just a little guidance?...Perhaps soon you will require your Jewish business owners to place Stars of David on their storefronts so that later it will be easier to identify them and smash their windows, or perhaps just a government promoted synagogue burning or two…after all, it’s just the Jews.”

Another person who objected to the screening was Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot. “I don’t know who in the hell thought this was a good idea, but Kate AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

Stewart and the city council need to make the call today to cancel this showing and relegate this movie—and its anti-Semitic values—back to the dark fringes of our society.”

On July 19, eight of the nine members of the Montgomery County Council wrote a scathing letter to Takoma Park Mayor Kate Stewart, asking her to cancel the screening. They thought showing it would be “offensive and hurtful to Takoma Park’s many Jewish residents.” Tom Hucker, who represents Takoma Park, was the lone hold-out because he said he didn’t feel comfortable signing the letter when he hadn’t seen the film.

The Washington Report asked attendees gathered outside the community center why they were there. Deepak Kenkeremath, who organizes a yearly “Voices from the Holy Land” film series held in DC metro area churches, said this event will be a case study. “Here we are with protesters waving banners and signs claiming this film is antiSemitic when they haven’t even seen it,” he said. “The controversy has brought out many more viewers. The fact that this screening wasn’t called off will show other local jurisdictions not to back down.”

Nadia, an Episcopalian, shook her head. “This is just what happened with the Catholic church. Israelis should learn that hiding what they’re doing makes things worse. If Americans hide and don’t express our opposition to the actions of the Israeli state, their actions will just get worse. Arresting and shooting children. It’s horrible. How come we can criticize a shooter who kills kids in Norway but not Israeli sharpshooters?”

Pat Labuda, agreed. “We are complicit since we give money and weapons that are used to oppress Palestinians.”

“I have a couple of kids and I want them to know how to respond to injustice,” said Eli Sasaran McCarthy, who teaches Justice and Peace Studies at Georgetown University. He helped organize the July 18 prayer service on Capitol Hill to protest the government’s treatment of children at the U.S.Mexico border. Seventy protesters were arrested, including a 90-year-old nun. McCarthy said he urges Catholics to take more risks to improve the treatment of migrant children and to end child detention. It’s past time to stop using the same old strategy of holding meetings and dialogues, he said.

Michael Marceau, president of the DC chapter of Veterans for Peace, who was awarded a Purple Heart in Vietnam, was wearing a “Make America Smart Again” hat. He said his military service earned him his First Amendment right to speak

freely and assemble peaceably to resist censorship. He argued that the money spent on the president’s Fourth of July display and aid to Israel should be helping homeless veterans.

A proud Zionist Herbert Grossman stood outside, surrounded by media, with a sign protesting the film, which he had not seen.

Grossman stated that by showing the film, the city was appeasing all the anti-Semites.

The community center was full to capacity, with the audience spilling into an overflow room. City manager Brenda Smith welcomed the audience with the words, “Not all art is pretty. Art is supposed to make you think. Our job is to create a safe space to have discussions.” The audience was encouraged to get out of their comfort zone and listen, share and learn.

While many inside and outside the community had urged the city to cancel the screening, organizers agreed, “If we’d cancelled there would be no opportunity to listen to each other and deepen our understanding. Brown emphasized that the committee agreed the film strongly criticized Israel but was not anti-Semitic, and added that anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are causing great suffering in this country.

After the film, panelist Mayers said his group J-Street is pro-Israel and also propeace. “You can love Israel and still disagree with the policies of its government.

You can love Israel and still think that Palestinians aren’t evil but people with their own rights and their own need of a homeland of their own,” Mayers said.

Herzallah said those who denounced the documentary’s screening and his attendance on the panel prove the point of the film. He praised the film for its quality and use of scholars and researchers, half of them Jewish, who have studied the subject for decades. “Any time there is a discussion on Palestine from the Palestinian narrative, there has to be this aura of objectivity by including an opposing voice,” Herzallah said, referring to the angry letters read before the panelists were invited to speak. “The narrative of the colonizer is not a viable narrative.”

The film ends on a hopeful note, arguing that accurate information can be the basis for rational discussion that can change U.S. policy. With the internet and the rise of social media news, the Israeli government and pro-Israel groups will find it impossible to manage American perceptions of the conflict. The plucky progressive city of Takoma Park showed that Americans are indeed open to learning about the Palestinians’ side of the story. ■

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Special Report

Pastor John Hagee, founder and chairman of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), speaking at the Washington Summit, July 9.

THE LARGEST ISRAELI LOBBY group in the United States, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), held a two-day “summit,” July 8 and 9, in Washington, DC, featuring high-profile speakers such as Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Many of the event’s attendees and featured guests professed their abiding love and support for Israel and Jewish people.

In reality, right-wing Christian supporters of Israel like CUFI pose a grave danger to the safety and well-being of both Jews and Palestinians, as well as to hopes for a true and lasting peace in the Holy Land. Anyone who actually listens to CUFI’s leader, the Rev. John Hagee, should be horrified at the meeting’s toxic blend of anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia, Islamophobia and sexism.

Hagee and his more than 5 million followers believe that the establishment of Israel in 1948 and its subsequent military oc-

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb chairs the board of Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity and is a member of the Rabbinic Council of Jewish Voice for Peace. The Rev. Graylan Hagler is senior pastor of Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, DC and director and chief visionary of Faith Strategies. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily represent those of Religion News Service.

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cupation and colonization of Palestinian and other Arab lands are the fulfillment of biblical prophecy and the necessary precursors to the return of Jesus Christ and the coming of the apocalypse.

Once this final theological drama begins, they believe, gentiles and Jews will be judged, and those who accept Jesus as the Christ will be saved, and all others will be condemned to the eternal fires of damnation. Everyone else is expendable, including the Jews they claim to love so much.

Hagee and the rest of his triumphalist crew actively pursue their conviction that all Jews must return to Israel and rebuild a Jewish Temple in the Noble Sanctuary mosque complex in occupied East Jerusalem (one of the most sensitive religious sites in the world). That done, they will convert to Christianity or face death.

In Christian Zionist theology, Israel can’t be divided into two states for the sake of peace; Jerusalem must be united under Israeli control. Non-Jews (meaning Palestinians) must be expelled.

While their support for Israel is supposed proof that their program is not anti-Semitic, CUFI’s adherents’ interest in Israel is little more than a declaration that Jews are only useful insofar as they trigger the end of days. Palestinian suffering—

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MICHAEL BROCHSTEIN/SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET

Christian Zionist Lobby is Built on Anti-Semitic Theology

By Lynn Gottlieb & Graylan Hagler

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including that of Christian Palestinians who come from some of the oldest Christian communities in the world—has no meaning in Christian Zionist belief.

This kind of pseudo-fundamentalist theology has long been the basis for white supremacy and colonialism, which relied on the concept that it was the “white man’s burden” to save people of color from themselves. It was this same political religious fervor that sought to tame the “savages” in the Americas.

Those of us whose faith leads us to envision a future that promotes human dignity, safety and security across all borders must actively resist the efforts of CUFI and other white supremacist organizations in the United States to advance their dangerous, regressive agendas.

Thankfully, millions of Americans, including Jews, Muslims, Christians, Bud-

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

dhists, Hindus, Sikhs and people of humanistic faith, realize that the foundations of a just society are built upon values that uphold the human rights of every single citizen. We recognize that militarism, racism, poverty and climate disaster are systemic ills that we must address together, as a matter of faith, so that our children can live.

As we seek healing and repair for the harms of the past, we cannot tolerate organizations that promote theologies built on hatred and exclusivity. This is not the way forward. We have sacrificed enough children on the altars of white supremacy. No more.

How can a political and theological agenda refuse to see the humanity, sacredness and suffering in the other and yet still claim to be religious?

This is what CUFI does. It supports Is-

rael at all cost, without question or criticism, while ignoring the great injustices against Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories based upon the antiSemitic theological/political idea that Jews must be restored to “their homeland” in order for the Second Coming of Jesus to occur.

As clergy and people of deep faith and conscience, we do not know a God that ignores or justifies the suffering of one group of people for the security and comfort of others. We do not know a God that justifies in any form or fashion the oppression and subjugation of others.

We call on Americans of all beliefs to stand in support of Palestinians struggling for their long-denied freedom and against the kind of dangerous pseudoreligious extremism that CUFI represents. ■

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August/September 2019 issue 7/25/19 8:55 AM Page 38

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Congress Watch

Khashoggi Assassination Continues to Draw Congressional Reaction, But to Little Effect

By Shirl McArthur

THE MOST DRAMATIC CONGRESSIONAL REACTION to the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, which was widely believed to have been ordered by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was the introduction and passage in the Senate of 22 “Joint Resolutions of Disapproval” of arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE (Saudi Arabia’s partner in attacking the Houthi rebels in Yemen).

The measures, S.J.Res. 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, and 48, were introduced by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Patrick Leahy (DVT), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Rand Paul (R-KY), Jack Reed (D-RI), and Todd Young (R-IN). They were passed on June 20 by votes of 53-45 or 51-45, with all the no votes being Republicans. The House passed three of the bills on July 17, by votes of 238-190 and 237-190. President Donald Trump vetoed the bills on July 24.

On June 24, in reaction to President Trump’s claim of an “emergency” to justify proceeding with arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other countries, Menendez introduced S. 1945, the “Saudi Arabia False Emergencies” bill, which would amend the Arms Export Control Act to provide “protection of Congressional review and oversight of arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other countries.” The bill has seven cosponsors, including Menendez. H.R. 643, introduced in January by Rep. James McGovern (D-MA), “to prohibit provision of U.S. security assistance to the Government of Saudi Arabia,” now has 31 cosponsors, including McGovern.

As previously reported, citing constitutional separation of powers, the Trump administration refused to meet the requirement imposed by the Global Magnitsky Act to determine whether a foreign person is responsible for killing Khashoggi and to report to Congress with a decision on the imposition of sanctions on that person or persons. S. 398, the Senate’s response to the administration’s action, introduced in February

by Menendez, still has seven cosponsors, including Menendez. It would impose sanctions on persons responsible for the death of Khashoggi, and would “support the peaceful resolution of the civil war in Yemen, address the resulting humanitarian crisis, and hold the perpetrators responsible for murdering a Saudi dissident.”

On June 27 Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), with 33 Democratic cosponsors, introduced the nonbinding H.Res. 472 “requestAUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

ing the President to strongly condemn Jamal Khashoggi’s killing, hold accountable individuals identified as culpable, and condemn imprisonment of and violence against journalists around the world.” H.R. 2037 “To encourage accountability” for Khashoggi’s murder, introduced in April by Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ), now has 20 cosponsors, including Malinowski.

NEW MEASURES INTRODUCED CONCERNING SAUDI ACTIONS IN YEMEN

After the failure to override Trump’s April veto of S.J. Res. 7, to direct the removal of U.S. Armed Forces from Yemen, as described in the June/July Washington Report, other measures to limit or prohibit U.S. participation in the Saudi actions in Yemen have languished (see the “Status Updates” box), but three new measures were introduced concerning the violence in Yemen.

On June 10 Sen. Murphy, with four cosponsors, introduced S.R. 243 “requesting information on Saudi Arabia’s human rights practices in Yemen.” Then, apparently in an effort to justify the administration’s support of Saudi actions in Yemen, Republicans on June 27 introduced nearly identical resolutions in the House and Senate “strongly condemning human rights violations, violence against civilians, and cooperation with Iran by the Houthi movement and its allies in Yemen.” In the Senate, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and six cosponsors introduced S.Con.Res. 21, and in the House, Reps. Will Hurd (RTX) and Mike McCaul (R-TX) introduced H.Con.Res. 50.

EFFORTS CONTINUE TO PASS ANTI-BDS MEASURES

Anti-BDS H.Res. 246, introduced in March by Rep. Bradley Schneider (D-IL), was passed by a 398-17 vote in the House on July 23. The identical S.Res. 120, introduced in March by Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), now has 69 cosponsors, including Cardin. These measures, strongly pushed by AIPAC, seem to be modest improvements over other anti-BDS measures in that they do not specifically equate Israel’s occupied territories with Israel and they give lip service to a two-state solution, but they still are objectionable on First Amendment grounds.

As previously reported, the Senate’s S. 1, titled “Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East,” introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in January, repeats four bills strongly promoted by AIPAC that didn’t make it into law in the 115th Con-

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STATUS UPDATES

S. 544, Khashoggi. S. 544 to require the Director of National Intelligence to submit a report on the death of Jamal Khashoggi, introduced in February by Sen. Ron Wyden (DOR), still has five cosponsors, including Wyden..

S.Con.Res. 2, S. 612, H.R. 1471, H.R. 1541, and H.Con.Res. 23, Saudi Nuclear Program. None of the five previously-described measures requiring congressional approval of any nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia, has gained support. S.Con.Res.2, introduced in February by Sen. Jeff Merkley, still has three cosponsors, including Merkley; S. 612, introduced in February by Sens. Edward Markey (D-MA) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), has no new cosponsors; H.R. 1471, introduced in February by Rep. Brad Sherman, still has 12 cosponsors, including Sherman; H.R. 1541 introduced in March by Reps. Brad Schneider (D-IL) and Mark Meadows (RNC) has no new cosponsors, and H.Con.Res. 23, introduced in February by Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI) still has five cosponsors, including Levin.

H.J.Res. 37, H.R. 910, and H.J.Res. 56, Yemen.

H.J.Res. 37, nearly identical to the vetoed S.J. Res. 7, to direct the removal of U.S. Armed Forces from Yemen, introduced in January by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) was passed by the House in February but still has had no further action. H.R. 910, the “Yemen Refueling Prohibition” bill, introduced in January by Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), still has three cosponsors, including Lieu, and H.J.Res. 56, introduced in April by Rep. Justin Amash (I-MI), which is similar to the Khanna measure, still has no other cosponsors.

H.R. 1459, H.R. 1795, H.R. 1820, H.R. 2488, and H.Res. 324, U.S.-Israel Cooperation. The five bills to promote U.S.Israel cooperation in various areas have made little progress.

H.R. 1459, the “U.S.-Israel Cooperation Expansion” bill, introduced in February by Meadows still has only three gress. It would authorize aid and weapons transfers to Israel; extend defense cooperation with Jordan; impose additional sanctions related to the conflict in Syria, and allow state or local governments to divest assets from entities applying boycotts, divestments, or sanctions against Israel. It was passed by the Senate Feb. 5 and sent to the House Feb. 6 and has not moved since then.

The House’s companion bill, H.R. 336, was introduced in January by McCaul. It was referred to five different House com40

cosponsors, including Meadows; H.R. 1795, the “U.S.-Israel Directed Energy Cooperation” bill, introduced in March by Lieu, now has four cosponsors, including Lieu; H.R. 1820, the “U.S.-Israel International Development Cooperation” bill, introduced in March by Reps. Lois Frankel (D-FL) and Randy Weber (R-TX), still has no other cosponsors; H.R. 2488, the “U.S.-Israel Cybersecurity Center of Excellence” bill, introduced in May by Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI), still has only five cosponsors, including Cicilline, and H.Res. 324, “Recognizing the Importance of the U.S.-Israel Economic Relationship,” introduced on April 18 by Lieu, now has three cosponsors including Lieu.

S. 567 and H.R. 1372, Golan Heights. S. 567, introduced

by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in February, still has 24 cosponsors, including Cruz. The identical H.R. 1372, introduced by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) in February, has 58 cosponsors, including Gallagher. The bills would “clarify that it is U.S. policy to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

S.Res. 171, Palestinian Aid. S.Res. 171, introduced in April by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), “expressing the sense of Congress regarding restoring U.S. bilateral assistance to the West Bank and Gaza,” still has six cosponsors, including Merkley.

H.R. 31 and S. 52, Syria. H.R. 31, the “Caesar Syria Civilian Protection” bill, “to halt the wholesale slaughter of the Syrian people, encourage a negotiated political settlement, and hold Syrian human rights abusers accountable,” introduced in January by Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), still has 58 cosponsors, including Engel. The Senate companion, S. 52, introduced in January by Sen. James Risch (R-ID), now has four cosponsors, including Risch.

—S.M.

mittees, and has not been reported out by any of them. It now has 62 cosponsors, including McCaul.

The most controversial section of the bill focuses on BDS. After the Senate’s passage of the bill, the ACLU issued a statement saying, in part, “Today the Senate chose politics over the Constitution and trampled on the First Amendment rights of all Americans.” But, while the First Amendment objection to the bills is getting the most attention, they are also objectionable because they

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

apply not just to Israel, but also to “Israeli-controlled territories.”

WISH LIST OF GOODIES FOR ISRAEL BILL CONTINUES TO GAIN SUPPORT

H.R. 1837, the “U.S.-Israel Cooperation Enhancement and Regional Security” bill, introduced in March by Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL), was passed by the House on July 23. It amounts to a wish list of goodies for Israel. Among other things, it authorizes several new “coopAUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

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erative” programs, extends the authorization for several security assistance programs, including the $3.8 billion per year called for in the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding, and extends loan guarantees. A new section was added intended to “fix” the unintended consequence of the “Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act” (ATCA) passed last year. While the purpose of the ATCA was clearly to cut off aid to the PA or PLO, its wording could also apply to any country accepting any amount of the described aid, effectively sacrificing the use of aid as a foreign policy tool. The new section, called “Justice for U.S. Victims of Palestinian Terrorism,” fixes the problem by simply eliminating that provision.

Identical bills were introduced June 18 in the Senate and House opposing Hezbollah in Lebanon’s military. S. 1886 was introduced by Sens. Ted Cruz (RTX) and Kevin Cramer (R-ND), and H.R. 3331 was introduced by Reps. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) and Elaine Luria (D-VA).

They would withhold 20 percent of U.S. military aid to Lebanon until the president certifies that the Lebanese military has taken steps to reduce the influence of persons associated with Hezbollah.

H.R. 1850, introduced in March by Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), imposes “sanctions with respect to foreign persons and agencies and instrumentalities of foreign states supporting Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or any affiliate or successor thereof.” It was passed by the House on July 23, and had 45 cosponsors, including Mast.

PRO-PALESTINIAN MEASURES INTRODUCED

On June 5 “Partnership Fund for Peace” bills were introduced in the Senate and House. S. 1727 was introduced by Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) and three cosponsors, and H.R. 3104 was introduced by Reps. Nita Lowey (D-NY) and Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE). They would establish a fund “to promote joint economic development and finance ventures between Palestinian entrepre-

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

neurs and companies and those in the U.S. and Israel.”

H.R. 2407, introduced in April by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN), now has 22 cosponsors, including McCollum. It would “require that U.S. funds do not support military detention, interrogation, abuse, or ill-treatment of Palestinian children” living under Israeli military occupation.

The previously-described H.Res. 326, “Expressing the sense of the House regarding U.S. efforts to resolve the IsraeliPalestinian conflict through a negotiated two-state solution,” introduced in April by Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-CA), now has 158 cosponsors, including Lowenthal. A new resolution, S.Res. 234, “affirming the U.S. commitment to the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and noting that Israeli annexation of territory in the West Bank would undermine peace and Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state,” was introduced June 5 by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR). It has 11 Democratic cosponsors, including Merkley.

H.Res. 138, introduced in February by Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL), now has 33 cosponsors, including Hastings. “Expressing support for addressing the Arab-Israeli conflict in a concurrent track with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and commending Arab and Muslim-majority states that have improved bilateral relations with Israel,” it gives passing reference to the importance of a two-state solution, but really seems more designed to support Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s “regional” approach.

MEASURES AIMED AT COUNTERING A DRIFT TO WAR WITH IRAN GAIN MORE SUPPORT

Most of the four previously-described measures aimed at preventing a war with Iran without congressional approval have gained cosponsors. S. 1039 introduced in April by Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM), now has 27 cosponsors, including Udall; H.R. 2354, introduced in April by Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA), now has 80 cosponsors,

including Eshoo, and H.R. 2829, introduced in May by Rep. Andy Levin (DMI), now has 74 cosponsors, including Levin, but H.J.Res. 58, introduced in May by Reps. Seth Moulton (D-MA) and Gil Cisneros (D-CA) has no additional cosponsors.

Of the previously-described new measures that would impose sanctions on Iran or Iranian organizations, only two have gained some support. H.R. 1441, to “Stop Corrupt Iranian Oligarchs and Entities,” introduced in February by Rep. David Kustoff (R-TN), now has 17 cosponsors, including Kustoff, and H.R. 2118, the “Iran Ballistic Missiles and International Sanctions Enforcement” bill, introduced in April by McCaul, now has four cosponsors, including McCaul.

S.Res. 195, introduced in May by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), opposing the lifting of sanctions on Iran without addressing other Iranian actions deemed objectionable, now has 14 cosponsors, including Cotton. The identical H.Res. 390 was introduced May 20 in the House by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and has 10 cosponsors.

SYRIA CONTINUES TO RECEIVE CONGRESSIONAL ATTENTION

On Jan. 30 Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ), with nine cosponsors, introduced H.R. 914 to “reduce the total number of members of the Armed Forces” in Syria, limiting U.S. forces in Syria to 1,500 troops.

On March 13 Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) introduced H.R. 1706 “to limit assistance for areas of Syria controlled by the Government of Syria or associated forces.” It has 25 cosponsors, including Engel. And on May 22 Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA) introduced H.Res. 395 “condemning the senseless attacks on hospitals and medical personnel in Syria.” It has nine cosponsors, including Boyle.

On May 20, 374 Senators and Representatives signed a bipartisan letter to Trump, strongly pushed by AIPAC, urging him to implement a comprehensive strategy in Syria that addresses the “growing threats to U.S. interests, Israel, and regional security and stability.” ■

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Four Views

Hurling Threats and Sanctions, Trump Tightens the Noose on Iran

well as Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Emirati Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed— knew all too well that Tehran inevitably would respond to Washington’s escalations with its own counter-escalations, forcing Trump into a position to order military strikes, lest he might come across as “weak.” Ironically, it was the conservative media complex that helped throw a wrench in these hawks’ plans: Reminded by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, among others, that there is no such thing as a limited strike against Iran, and that a wider war could kill Trump’s presidency, the toughtalking former reality TV star pulled back at the last minute, President Donald Trump’s advisers, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Secretary of State praising himself on Twitter for his Mike Pompeo, National Security Adviser John Bolton and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu restraint. are cornering him into war with Iran.

Trump was right to call off the military strikes he had ordered—war with Iran may please Saudi and Israeli leadership, but it does not serve U.S. interests—but the president seems to have learned very little from this nearcrisis. In lieu of dropping bombs, Trump announced that he would impose new sanctions on Iran, all while keeping his adBy Trita Parsi ministration’s team of warmongers—whom he privately disparages as “disgusting” for their hawkishness—at his side.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP WAS CONNED. He thought If Trump’s ego permitted, he should take a closer look at how his foreign policy advisers had given him an effective strategy President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry to force Iran to renegotiate its nuclear deal with the United handled a crisis with Iran in which war could have easily broken States; in reality, this “maximum pressure” strategy was seemout, but diplomacy instead won the day. It is a model for sanity ingly engineered to corner him into war with Iran. that has no counterpart in Trump’s administration.

The key advocates of this gambit—Trump’s national security In January 2016, two small boats of the U.S. Navy’s “riverine adviser, John Bolton, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, as forces” in the Persian Gulf committed what then-defense secreTrita Parsi is the author of Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the tary Ashton Carter eventually called “a navigational mistake,” Triumph of Diplomacy, available from Middle East Books and tending to a motor problem on one of the crafts while inside More. He teaches at Georgetown University. Copyright 2019 © The New Republic. All rights reserved.

Iranian territorial waters, not far from an island where Iran’s Is-

Trump Imposed New Sanctions On Iran. But He Should Use Obama’s Playbook to Prevent War

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lamic Revolutionary Guard Corps maintained a base. Four armed IRGC boats met the Americans, who attempted to flee the area but experienced persistent engine and communications issues. The U.S. knew they had superior firepower, but they also recognized that American and Iranian domestic political forces could quickly escalate a small encounter like this into full-blown war. Unable to convince the local patrol that their intentions were benign, the 10 American service members and their two craft were taken into Iranian custody.

The timing could not have been worse. In just a few hours, Obama was scheduled to give his State of the Union address, and later that week, the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal would go into effect; several American and Iranian prisoners were also supposed to be released in a separately negotiated prisoner swap, which would eventually grow controversial in its own right.

By the time Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was informed of the naval incident, the IRGC had already concluded that the American sailors were telling the truth: They were non-hostile and off-course. Zarif’s aim was to find a way to release the sailors as quickly as possible, preferably before U.S. officials made threatening public statements. “Knowing the United States,” Zarif told me in an interview for a 2017 book on the nuclear deal, “the language they’d use would be ‘Iran must release our guys.’ And then Iran would take it as a threat. And then we would have responded, and then this whole thing would have taken a life of its own.”

Within hours of the sailors’ arrest, Kerry and Zarif were on the phone, trying to devise a plan to release the sailors. Two years of nuclear talks had helped develop a rapport between the two; an incident that in the past would have led to a dangerous crisis could now promptly be handled through direct dialogue. (Kerry told me that before the nuclear negotiations, the U.S. “wouldn’t have known who to call” in an Iran crisis.) But while country-tocountry contacts had improved, media-fed public perceptions of the players had not. One wrong public statement from either side, and a crisis could still snowball quickly.

The U.S. was honest in its public position: It accepted responsibility where warranted, and never fell back on language that could be perceived as belligerent.

Kerry pressed Zarif to release the sailors fast, or else risk both the nuclear deal and the prisoner swap. Zarif insisted that such ultimatums only would rattle Iranian sensitivities. “You don’t need to threaten me,” Zarif told Kerry. “You’ve committed a grave mistake. So, I think what you need to do right now is to say, ‘We made a mistake. We’re sorry.’”

Rather than denying that the sailors had drifted into Iranian waters, the Pentagon quickly confirmed they’d been off-course.

“It clearly was a mistake,” Carter said in a TV interview. “That much seems clear by now.” The DOD also publicly declared that the sailors were being treated well by their Iranian minders.

“In some ways this has been very professional,” a senior Pentagon official told reporters.

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The next morning, the American sailors were released unharmed. They had been in IRGC custody for 16 hours. A potential prelude to military action between major powers was quickly and swiftly resolved in five phone calls between their top diplomats. That Kerry and Zarif had such access to each other, and a strong working relationship borne of years in negotiations, is remarkable enough. But another key factor was that the U.S. was honest in its public position: It accepted responsibility where warranted, and never fell back on language that could be perceived as belligerent, which limited just how much the incident was politicized in the U.S. and Iran. A modicum of respect and sensitivity to the political circumstances of the Iranians went a long way in defusing an otherwise explosive situation.

It is, of course, difficult to envision such shuttle diplomacy or humility coming from Bolton or Pompeo, Kerry’s successor at the State Department, and the first U.S. official out of the gate to accuse Iran of orchestrating the Gulf of Oman tanker attacks earlier this month. Nor is the president himself known for his honest bargaining. But if, as reports now suggest, there truly is daylight between Trump and his Iran hawks, perhaps he is willing to try a new tack. He has tried “maximum pressure,” Twitter threats, and war brinkmanship. It’s time he tried respect.

Trump Has a $259 Million Reason to Bomb Iran

By Eli Clifton

ON JUNE 20, THE UNITED STATES came perilously close to a military confrontation with Iran after it downed a U.S. drone that may or may not have entered the country’s air space.

President Donald Trump reportedly ordered a retaliatory military strike on Iran but called it off, according to Trump’s own tweets on the morning of June 21, because a general told him that “150 people” might die in the strike.

Much analysis of Trump’s slide toward war with Iran has focused on his hawkish national security adviser, John Bolton, who reportedly requested options from the Pentagon to deploy as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East and hit Iran with 500 missiles per day. Bolton is the loudest voice inside the White House pushing for a military escalation of the administration’s “maximum pressure” strategy.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, for his part, is staking out the position that the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force allows the administration to take military action against Iran without congressional approval, a broadly criticized interpretation of war powers and congressional oversight.

Yet, there’s another omnipresent influence on Trump: $259 million given by some of the GOP’s top supporters to boost his

Eli Clifton reports on money in politics and U.S. foreign policy. Eli previously reported for the American Independent News Network, ThinkProgress and Inter Press Service. Copyright © 2019 LobeLog. All rights reserved.

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campaign in 2016 and support Republican congressional and Senate campaigns in 2016 and 2018.

Those funds came from Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, Paul Singer and Bernard Marcus, billionaire donors who have made no secret, both through public statements and funding think tanks that support military action against Iran, of their desire for the United States to destroy the Islamic Republic.

Adelson, who alongside his wife Miriam are the biggest donors to Trump and the GOP, contributed $205 million to Republicans in the past two political cycles and reportedly sent $35 million to the Future 45 Super PAC that supported Trump’s presidential bid. His role as the biggest funder of Republican House and Senate campaigns makes him a vital ally for Trump—who relied on Adelson’s campaign donations to maintain a Republican majority in the Senate and curb Republican losses in the House in the 2018 midterm election—and any Republican seeking national office.

Adelson publicly suggested using nuclear weapons against Iran and pushed for Trump to replace then-national security adviser H.R. McMaster with Bolton, partly due to the former’s perceived unwillingness to take a harder line on Iran. In 2017, the Zionist Organization of America, which receives much of its funding from the Adelsons, led a public campaign against McMaster, accusing him of being “opposed to President Trump’s basic policy positions on Israel, Iran, and Islamist terror.”

In 2015, Trump mocked his primary opponent, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), for seeking Adelson’s financial support, warning that Adelson expects a degree of control over candidates in exchange for campaign contributions. Trump tweeted: Sheldon Adelson is looking to give big dollars to Rubio because he feels he can mold him into his perfect little puppet. I agree!

And Adelson isn’t alone.

Billionaire Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus is the second largest contributor to Trump’s campaign, providing $7 million. He also champions Bolton, contributing $530,000 to Bolton’s Super PAC over its lifetime. And he’s a major contributor to GOP campaigns, contributing over $13 million to Trump’s presidential campaign and GOP congressional campaigns in 2016 and nearly $8 million to GOP midterm efforts in 2018.

Marcus, like Adelson, makes no qualms about his views on Iran, which he characterized as “the devil” in a 2015 Fox Business interview.

Unlike Adelson and Marcus, hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer was a “never Trump” conservative until Trump won the election. Then he donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.

Singer is far more careful with his words than Marcus and Adelson, but his money supports some of the most hawkish think tank experts and politicians in Washington.

Singer, alongside Marcus and Adelson, has contributed generously to the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democ44

racies (FDD), whose experts have spent the past decade regularly promoting policies to pressure Iran economically and militarily, including most recently Trump’s “maximum pressure” approach.

According to donor rolls of FDD’s biggest supporters by the end of 2011, a year that saw a sharp rise in tensions and rumors of war by Israel against Iran, Adelson contributed $1.5 million, Singer contributed $3.6 million, and Marcus, who sits on FDD’s board, contributed $10.7 million.

(FDD says that Adelson is no longer a contributor, but Marcus continues to give generously, contributing $3.63 million in 2017, over a quarter of FDD’s contributions that year.)

Employees of Singer’s firm, Elliott Management, were the second largest source of funds for the 2014 candidacy of the Senate’s most outspoken Iran hawk, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who urged Trump to conduct a “retaliatory strike” against Iran for purportedly attacking two commercial tankers last week.

Singer donated $26 million to Republicans in the 2016 election and $6.4 million to the GOP’s midterm campaigns.

The billionaire Iran hawks—the Adelsons, Singer, and Marcus—made combined donations of over $259 million to GOP politicians in the past two cycles, making them some of the Republican Party’s most important donors. That quarter-billion-dollars doesn’t include contributions to dark money 501c4 groups and donations to 501c3 nonprofits, such as think tanks like FDD. News coverage of Trump’s slide toward war frames the discussion as a competition between his better instincts and a national security adviser and secretary of state who, to varying degrees, favor military action.

But the $259 million that helped elect Trump and Trumpfriendly Republicans must loom large over the president.

As Trump evaluates his options with Iran and turns his attention to the 2020 election, he knows he’ll need to rely on the Adelsons, Singer, and Marcus to boost his campaign, maintain a narrow majority in the Senate, and attempt a takeback of the House.

These donors have made their policy preferences on Iran plainly known. They surely expect a return on their investment in Trump’s GOP.

The Hybrid War Against Iran

By Vijay Prashad

U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP sat in the White House and contemplated a war against Iran. His army had been sending surveillance aircraft along the Iranian coastline, teasing Iranian radar, which tracked these manned and unmanned planes as they skirted the 12-nautical-mile limit of Iranian sovereignty.

In mid-June, the United States had two planes alongside Iran’s coast—an unmanned Global Hawk drone and a manned P-8 spy plane.

Iranian air command radioed the U.S. forces to say that both the

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drone and the spy plane had come inside Iranian territory. The P8 shifted course to leave Iranian airspace, while the Global Hawk continued. Iranian officials say that it was because the Global Hawk remained in Iranian airspace that it was shot down at 4 a.m. on the morning of June 20 Trump and his team threatened to retaliate. They wanted to shoot at Iranian radar and anti-aircraft facilities. At the eleventh hour, Trump decided not to fire at the Iranian targets. The Pentagon had warned him that this would threaten U.S. troops in the area. It was to protect these troops, rather than to preserve innocent Iranian lives, that Trump did not launch a strike.

SANCTIONS

Trump might not have sent in a suite of missiles to hit Iran that week, but the United States has—of course—already opened up a certain kind of war against Iran. A few days before the drone was shot down, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council—Ali Shamkhani—gave a talk in Ufa, Russia, on security matters. In his talk, Shamkhani said that the United States had squashed the sovereignty of a number of countries.

The U.S. Treasury Department, he said, had become a kind of financial CentCom (Central Command). Shamkhani said that the policies pursued by the United States should be considered “economic terrorism.”

U.S. unilateral sanctions are at the heart of this “economic terrorism.” The United States is able to use sanctions as an effective instrument against other countries because it has such enormous power over the world financial and monetary system. The U.S. dollar is the main reserve currency and the main currency of international trade. Reliance upon the U.S. dollar and on U.S. financial systems means that most countries are unwilling to stand up against U.S. pressure.

Sanctions have meant that Iran—reliant upon the export of oil and natural gas—has seen its external revenues collapse. The domination by the United States over the world financial system— including crucial international financial institutions notably the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank—has meant that Iran has not been able to raise credit on the international market. Difficulty in importing medicines and food has produced grave challenges for the Iranian people.

HYBRID WAR

Since the Western media continues to set the terms of international understanding, Washington’s interpretation of events concerning Iran predominates. Iran has never attacked the United States, but the U.S. has in fact intervened several times in Iran.

Vijay Prashad is the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and chief editor of LeftWord Books. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He writes regularly for The Hindu, Frontline, Newsclick, and BirGün. This article was produced by Globetrotter and first published by Common Dreams.

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In 1953, the United States in concert with the UK—overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadeq, and over the course of the next two decades provided full support to the unpopular government of the shah of Iran. When the Gulf Arabs pushed Saddam Hussain to attack Iran in 1980, the United States and Western Europe provided Iraq with arms and money for a bloody eight-year war. All of this context is lost to the Western media, which hyperventilates while relaying fantasy stories about Hezbollah in Venezuela or Iranian control over the Houthis. It is always Iran that is the aggressor, even when it has been Iran at the receiving end of U.S. aggression.

Iran is seen as the cause of the problem; the idea that Iran is a rogue or terrorist state becomes hard to shake off. This is part of the information war that Iran faces, unable—even with a sophisticated foreign minister in Javad Zarif—to argue the case that it has not been belligerent, but rather has been at the receiving end of threats and sanctions from Washington.

Between 2010 and 2012, four Iranian nuclear scientists were killed. These scientists—Masoud Alimohammadi, Darioush Rezaeinejad, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan and Majid Shahriari—were killed either by Israeli intelligence, the Iranian opposition group Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), U.S. intelligence, or some combination of all of them. These scientists were killed inside Iran, in broad daylight. It sent a chill through the scientific community. A U.S.- and Israeli-created computer worm— Stuxnet—hit Iranian computer systems in 2010, creating damage to Iran’s computers that held up part of its nuclear work. It was announced that more such attacks were possible. These took place before the nuclear deal was agreed upon in 2015.

But the stench of such attacks remains.

Iran’s minister of information and communications technology—Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi—said that Iran has built a firewall that protects its facilities from any cyberweapon thrown at it by the United States and Israel. This firewall is built by Iranian computer scientists.

It is this combination of attacks—the sanctions, the information war, the sabotage—that comprises the “hybrid war” against Iran. This hybrid war continues, with the threats of war

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as part of the arsenal wielded by Washington against Iran.

Even Trump’s statement that he withdrew the order to bomb Iran just minutes before the attack began is part of this information war, an attempt to terrify Iranians into the belief that the Americans are dangerous enough to drop bombs at any time. The hybrid war tightens the noose around Iran.

GROUP AGAINST SANCTIONS

It is not easy to untangle the reliance of the world economy on the U.S. dollar and U.S. financial systems. Talk of multilateralism is premature. It is one thing to call for it and another to recognize that it will take at least a decade to create the institutions and instruments for multilateralism. Confidence in the Chinese yuan, for instance, will need to be built. So will confidence in alternative systems to transfer money and to reconcile trades. The European Union has said openly that it wanted an alternative mechanism to pay Iran for oil, one that would not run through U.S. sanctions. But such an instrument will take time.

Meanwhile, on the political plane, about 25 countries have come together to create a platform against sanctions. These countries, says Iran’s senior parliamentarian Mohammad Ali Pourmokhtar, will stand together against the “inhumane” U.S. sanctions regime. It is not clear what this group will be able to do, but it is certainly the case that they will conduct a political campaign against the kind of harsh sanctions that are currently in force on Venezuela, Cuba and Iran.

It is significant that China and Russia will be involved with this club. In Tehran, Russia’s Ambassador Levan Dzhagaryan said that China, Iran and Russia will form a trilateral group to fight against the U.S. unilateral war on Iran.

The group of 25 will struggle against sanctions and the group of three will try to prevent a U.S. war—but whether they can prevail is seriously in question. The United States—under (Advertisement)

Trump—is utterly unreliable, its military arsenal ready to be unleashed, its hybrid war already unfurled. These are dangerous times.

Europe’s Failure to Meet Iran Halfway

By Kaveh L. Afrasiabi

WITH THE PASSING OF IRAN’S JULY 7 DEADLINE for Europe to live up to its obligations under the nuclear agreement or face consequences, European governments are hoping that Iran will deem satisfactory their token gestures, such as the launching of a special financial mechanism for Iran trade with a credit line of a paltry few million euros.

Iran, however, has insisted steadfastly that, unless Europe fully implements its obligations, it will reciprocate with incremental non-implementation of its part of the agreement. Iran’s exceeding the ceiling on stashed enriched uranium and heavy water has already caused alarm in European capitals. Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has made it abundantly clear that Iran’s next move will be to forgo the limit on the level of enrichment, presently capped at

A Project of Middle East Children’s Alliance

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WAshINgToN REPoRT oN MIDDlE EAsT AFFAIRs

Kaveh L. Afrasiabi has taught at Tehran University and Boston University and is a former consultant to the U.N. Program on Dialogue Among Civilizations. He is the author of several books on Iran, Islam, and the Middle East, including After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran’s Foreign Policy (Westview Books, 1995) and most recently Iran Nuclear Accord and the Remaking of the Middle East (2018). He is the co-author of the forthcoming Trump and Iran: Containment to Confrontation. Copyright © 2019 LobeLog. All rights reserved.

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3.67 percent, which is a major proliferation concern.

Other Iranian challenges to the nuclear agreement remain in the offing, such as reducing transparency, limiting short-notice inspections, and perhaps even halting the voluntary adoption of the intrusive Additional Protocol of the International Atomic Energy Agency. In the end, if U.S. sanctions continue and Europe fails to address Iran’s concerns, the nuclear agreement (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) will be destined for history’s dustbin and Iran may even exit the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty altogether, as Zarif and other Iranian officials have repeatedly warned.

Currently, the nub of Europe’s problem with Iran is “INSTEX reductionism.” INSTEX (Instrument for Support of Trade (Advertisement)

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Exchange) is now operational after a sixmonth delay. But few Iranians are willing to attach too much importance to it, primarily because it is expressly limited to the exchange of “humanitarian goods,” which are exempted from the U.S. sanctions in the first place. The European Three (France, England, and Germany), which are the powerhouses behind the INSTEX, pledged billions of euro to assist Iran over a decade ago when it initially agreed to halt its nuclear fuel cycle.

Despite Iran’s great advances in its nuclear technology, which have since raised proliferation concerns, Europe’s stingy response has been one of diminishing returns, offering less and less for the sake of reaching a grand bargain.

This Eurocentric attitude of bargaining on the cheap is destined to backfire. Europe has much to lose from the demise of the JCPOA and the return of the Iran nuclear crisis. Europe’s reduction of its JCPOA commitments to token gestures under the guise of INSTEX, while insisting on Iran’s full compliance with the accord, speaks of a hypocritical double standard as well as failure to take Iran’s warnings seriously. As Iranian Ambassador to the U.N. Majid Takht-Ravanchi has put it, Iran cannot be expected to be a unilateral party to a multilateral agreement. The INSTEX initiative, moreover, has no tangible effect on Iran’s economy.

Its purview must be immediately expanded to include major oil contracts as well as other participants—China, for instance, has expressed interest in joining—and the limited credit line should be vastly increased.

Although the Western media has interpreted INSTEX as a European mechanism to “bypass U.S. sanctions,” Tehran believes it to be a mechanism to “contain Iran” and indirectly rationalize the U.S. sanctions. Yet, U.S. sanctions on Iran violate international law and the will of U.N. Security Council, and there is no justification for the failure of JCPOA parties to take the United States to the U.N. Security Council over its violation of Resolution 2231. Instead, Europe has limited itself to expressions of “regret” over the

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unilateral U.S. exit from the JCPOA, an international binding agreement, while in the same breath warning Iran not to breach the agreement.

Iran has made it clear that it will continue with selective non-implementation of the JCPOA but is willing to reverse its decisions if Europe implements its written commitments under the terms of JCPOA. In other words, the ball is entirely in Europe’s court. The Europeans should learn from China, another JCPOA signatory, which has explicitly denounced U.S. bullying on its oil trade with Iran. Indeed, Europe ought to file a complaint against the United States in the World Trade Organization, arguing that U.S. sanctions on Iran violate the norms of global free trade and introduce serious trade distortions. But Europe is unlikely to pursue these tactics, neither at the U.N. nor at the WTO, and thus the crisis will only get worse. ■

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Special Report

U.S. Sanctions on Hezbollah to Carry LongTerm Impact in Lebanon, Middle East

Mohammed Raad (c), Lebanese MP for the Shiite Hezbollah party and its representative, holds a meeting for the party's bloc in the capital Beirut’s southern suburb of Haret Hreik, July 11, 2019, including MPs Amin Sherri (fourth-l), Hassan Fadlallah (fifth-l), Ali Ammar (sixth-l), and Industry Minister Hussein Haj Hassan (fourth-r). The lawmakers from the Lebanese Shi’a movement condemned U.S. sanctions against three of its officials, saying they would “change nothing” in the group’s rejection of U.S. policies in the region.

A PA R T F R O M I T ’ S S Y M B O L I S M , the sanctioning of three top Hezbollah officials by the United States carries no immediate or short-term substantial effect, given that none of the blacklisted names travels to the United States or owns property across the Atlantic.

This is just the beginning, however, of where the Trump administration seems to be heading with Iran and its various proxies in the Middle East. If expanded horizontally across the Lebanese political spectrum or vertically within the party itself, it

Sami Moubayed is a Syrian historian and author of Under the Black Flag, available from Middle East Books and More. Copyright ©2019 The Arab Weekly and distributed by Agence Global.

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can become quite dangerous—and painful—for all of Lebanon.

For now, the sanctions only limit the financial transactions and travel abilities of Members of Parliament Muhammad Raad and Amin Sherri, as well as Wafiq Safa, who oversees Hezbollah’s Liaison and Coordination Unit.

U.S. citizens will be unable to meet with them, hire them or do business with them.

Raad, 64, is the most well-known among the three, having held a parliamentary seat since Hezbollah decided to take part in local politics, in parallel with its military program, in 1992.

Raad serves on the party’s Executive Council and often as a personal representative of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. Raad heads Hezbollah’s bloc in parliament, which in-

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cludes 13 MPs. Sherri, 63, is far less known, having served in parliament since 2005. Safa is the most influential, being one of the cofounders of Hezbollah and a long-time friend and confidant of Nasrallah.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the blacklist aims to contain Hezbollah’s “corrupting influence” in Lebanon. He added that the men had “exploited their positions to smuggle illegal goods into Lebanon and pressure Lebanese financial institutions to assist Hezbollah.”

Pompeo has been pushing for such action since his March visit to Beirut. He called on the Lebanese state to end its support for Hezbollah and threatened action against those who refused to comply.

Shortly after his departure, it was rumored that the United States would be sanctioning Hezbollah’s chief ally, Nabih Berri, the long-time speaker of Lebanon’s parliament and a firm ally of Nasrallah.

The mere thought of sanctioning Berri gripped the entire Lebanese political scene, due to his sensitive position as head of the country’s legislative branch and the might of the Shi’a street that he co-commands with Nasrallah.

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AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

Like many Shi’a politicians in Iraq, Berri has brilliantly managed to remain close both to Iran and the United States, positioning himself as an intermediary and stability guarantor. If he was earmarked for sanctions, then nobody in Lebanon is safe, not even Lebanese President Michel Aoun, who relied on Hezbollah support to reach Baabda Palace three years ago, or Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who appointed two Hezbollah ministers to his government.

What if the Trump administration goes further than Raad, Sherri and Safa, targeting Hezbollah “friends” in the Lebanese chamber? Berri would be first on the list no doubt, perhaps explaining why he snapped: “This is an assault on parliament and on all of Lebanon!”

Or what if it targets Hezbollah cabinet ministers and their allies in the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc, putting the entire Lebanese government in jeopardy?

Hezbollah has two members in the Hariri cabinet: Youth and Sports Minister Muhammad Fneish and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mamoud Komati. A third affiliate, who is not an official party member, is Jamal Jabak, the minister of health. If any of them are blacklisted, sanctions would badly affect the sectors in which they work—in Jabak’s case, affecting medicine, hospitals and clinics—in addition to the entire legislative branch.

If Hariri or whoever succeeds him as prime minister tries to force Hezbollah ministers out of office, the cabinet would fall—literally overnight—becoming “unconstitutional.” Ignoring Hezbollah would be impossible and so would squeezing its members out of office or learning how to live with them, while they are sanctioned.

On a macro-level, the recent U.S. designation sends a message to the international community that there is no such thing as a “military wing” and “political command” for Hezbollah. They are different faces to one entity, claim both the United States and Israel. There are voices in the West who say that civilian members of Hezbollah, such as Raad, Sherri and Safa, who never carried arms but believe in the party’s doctrine, cannot be consid-

ered “terrorists.”

Germany is of this view, drawing a clear line between Hezbollah’s political and military wing and, until last March, so was Great Britain. Hariri relies on this argument to explain himself in the United States when asked why Hezbollah has been adequately represented on all his cabinets since 2009.

A third option that ought to be considered is how Hezbollah will react to the U.S. sanctions. What if it drags the entire country into a confrontation with the United States, claiming more sensitive portfolios such as education, for example, economy or electricity, subjecting those sectors to U.S. sanctions as well?

Much of that depends on how far the Trump administration will go in what remains of its tenure and whether it will expand the sanctions list or stop at this stage ahead of the 2020 elections, taking sanctions to a new level if Trump is re-elected president. ■ (Advertisement)

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Special Report

Mohamed Morsi: An Egyptian Tragedy

By Abdullah Al-Arian

SAID KHATIB/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

THE JUNE 17 DEATH of former President Mohamed Morsi is only the latest in a series of untold tragedies that have afflicted Egypt since the spark of revolution flickered more than eight years ago. His unlikely rise to the presidency reflected the aspirations of millions of Egyptians for a future free of despotic military rule. His subsequent arrest at the hands of a resurgent dictatorship made him one of 60,000 Egyptians imprisoned for daring to seek a better life.

The mysterious circumstances surrounding Morsi’s death while in the custody of Egyptian state security services bring up many questions.

But there is no doubt about the regime’s culpability for a death it had long sought, whether through a series of spurious death penalty cases against the former president, or as a consequence of the appalling A Palestinian youth uses his phone to take a “selfie” photo in front of a poster depicting the prison conditions that have contributed to late former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, at a tent where men received condolences for the demise of his health and which have him, in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, June 19, 2019. Mourners gathered in New York, been roundly condemned by international Lanham, MD, Sarajevo, Berlin, Karachi, Istanbul, Tunis and other cities around the world. human rights bodies. the incumbent’s sole opponent had endorsed him.

For Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the field marshal who overthrew Morsi The constitutional amendments the regime pushed through in a July 2013 coup and restored military rule in Egypt, his death earlier this year have all but cemented the Egyptian military’s exsignals yet another milestone in a six-year mission to bury any traordinary privileges over civil society and were intended to enremaining vestiges of Egypt’s short-lived democratic transition. sure a Sisi presidency for decades to come. All the while, the That process began when the then-defense minister ordered economic deprivation, physical insecurity, and basic human inthe arrest of the democratically elected president, who had apdignity against which millions of Egyptians mobilized in 2011 pointed him, and proceeded to crack down on his supporters. have gotten far worse.

The massacre at the Rabaa Square sit-in six weeks later, in In contrast to Sisi’s iron fist approach to power, Morsi’s path to which nearly 1,000 protesters were killed, represented the the presidency mirrored the uncertainties and anxieties of the solargest single-day mass killing of civilians by security forces in ciety from which he emerged. Born in 1951 in a small village Egypt’s modern history. In the years since, the Sisi regime has northeast of Cairo, Morsi came of age during the height of Gamal banned all forms of protest, shut down independent media, imAbdel Nasser’s presidency, in which Egypt’s authoritarian system prisoned tens of thousands of activists and even engaged in exfirst took root. trajudicial killings.

He relocated to Cairo to pursue his higher education as part Sisi was anointed president in 2014, following a sham election of a broader wave of urban migration from the Egyptian countryheld under extremely repressive conditions, and re-elected for a side. But the collapse of Nasserism following the country’s defeat second term last year in another equally absurd vote in which in the 1967 war with Israel, and the inability to meet the basic Abdullah Al-Arian is associate professor of history at Georgetown needs of a rapidly growing population, sent the country into a criUniversity. Copyright © 2019 Al Jazeera Media Network. The views sis. Like many other Egyptians, Morsi pursued further studies expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance. abroad, receiving a doctorate in engineering in the United States AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

51

before returning to teach at an Egyptian university during the early years of President Hosni Mubarak’s rule.

In some ways, Morsi represents a lost generation, millions of Egyptians deprived of any say in their own governance for decades, men and women who were later forced to watch as the octogenarian president Mubarak prepared to hand over power to his son Gamal, who was in his early 40s. Rather than wallow in his own marginalization, Morsi joined many others of his generation in devoting much of his life to public service, working within the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing, which offered itself as an alternative to the corrupt ruling National Democratic Party.

Although it had been outlawed since 1954, by the late Mubarak era the Muslim Brotherhood had steadily emerged as a significant opposition movement within Egyptian civil society, offering crucial social services and joining a broad cross-section of society in calling for serious political reforms and demanding democratic elections. That opportunity finally arose following the mass protests that unseated Mubarak in February 2011.

Unlike Gamal Mubarak, who believed himself destined to inherit his father’s seat, there was nothing to suggest that Morsi ever desired the presidency he eventually won in the country’s first-ever free presidential election. Nor did he prove particularly suited for the position, which had little use for his years of experience in activism within a closed political system. However, what most of Morsi’s harshest critics failed to grasp during his precarious year in office were the structural impediments that would have doomed to failure any figure from the ranks of Egypt’s revolutionaries.

On the eve of the country’s historic presidential election, the ruling military council quietly issued a decree that effectively stripped the incoming president of all executive powers. Months later, when Morsi attempted to reclaim the powers of his office, a predictably alarmist state media and a distrustful political opposition condemned it as a sinister power grab. The weakest president Egypt ever had, incredibly became “pharaoh” in the eyes of an in52

Tunisians gather near Egypt’s embassy in Tunis holding banners, photos and shouting slogans after attending the funeral prayer in absentia for former President of Egypt Mohamed Morsi, in Tunis, Tunisia, June 18, 2019. creasingly fractious public.

In a sense, Morsi’s greatest mistake was in managing to convince Egyptians that he held the powers of the office to which he was elected. Whether fairly or unfairly, by the end of his first year as president every new failure had been laid at Morsi’s feet. The accusations had even crossed over into the ridiculous: Morsi was supposedly negotiating a secret sale of Egypt’s pyramids to a foreign country when he was overthrown. Some of the conspiracy theories would have been laughable had they not ended up on a list of court charges for which he would later face a possible death sentence.

AN ILL-FATED PRESIDENCY

Absent from many of the critiques of Morsi’s ill-fated presidency was the role of countless other actors committed to ensuring the failure of Egypt’s revolutionary moment: government bureaucrats loyal to the former regime who refused to implement presidential policies; an oligarch class that created artificial energy shortages to stir popular discontent; a political opposition that cynically played the role of spoiler when it could not defeat Morsi or his party in elections; foreign governments that bankrolled the counter-revolution; and, of course, the Egyptian armed forces, which continued to

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

hold most of the cards during the contentious revolutionary transition.

One could certainly point to Morsi’s leadership flaws, his poor communication of key decisions, and his inability to forge a broad revolutionary coalition to withstand the coming counter-revolution, but in the face of such an onslaught, it is unlikely that any opposition figure would have stood a chance.

And so his presidency came to an unceremonious end before it ever really began. Morsi’s legacy encompassed little more than the momentary hope for a democratic future embodied in his ceremonial assumption of a post long regarded as the sole domain of ruthless authoritarians.

But as his successor would soon realize, that brief hope has proven to be stubbornly hard to extinguish. Six years after the coup that overthrew Morsi, many Egyptians continue to perceive the current regime as illegitimate.

It is probably for this reason that the Sisi regime, consistent with its rampant inhumanity, denied a former president a proper public funeral, instead hastily arranging a pre-dawn burial which only two of Morsi’s surviving family members were allowed to attend. By choosing to bury him in the dead of night, the regime has only succeeded in shining a light on the enduring tragedy of a nation. ■ AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

YASSINE GAIDI/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES

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Islam and the Near East in the Far East

Rohingyas: U.N. Recognizes Failures, Myanmar Shrugs

By John Gee

ANN WANG/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

THERE WERE “SYSTEMIC FAILURES” in the U.N.’s handling of the situation in Myanmar leading up to the mass expulsion of the Rohingyas in 2017, according to a report compiled by Guatemalan diplomat, Gert Rosenthal. The report was written after U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres ordered that an internal review should be conducted, and was released on May 29. The review covered the period from 2010 to 2018.

In his opening remarks, Rosenthal offered a concise outline of the challenges faced by Myanmar: “Myanmar had a population of some 54 million peo- Reuters journalists Wa Lone (second, r) and Kyaw Soe Oo (second, l) carry their children after being freed ple in 2019, with a pro- from prison in a presidential amnesty, after a global campaign for their release, in Yangon on May 7, 2019. longed and conflictive colo- They were jailed for their reporting on the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar. nial heritage from 1824 Muslim Rohingya population.

(British Burma) to 1948 (Independence), a strongly repressive Rosenthal’s report criticized elements of the U.N. response and inward-looking military rule between 1962 and 2010, a such as weaknesses in the organization’s collection and rich and proud cultural tradition, and a population divided into analysis of on-the-ground information and “the absence of a some 135 recognized ethnic groups (classified under eight clear and unified strategy.” Turning to the causes of the U.N.’s major national ethnic races, dominated by the Bamar, which deficient response, Rosenthal pointed to several factors, incomprise around two thirds of the population). The country cluding attitudes within the U.N. toward Aung San Suu Kyi, the has experienced long-standing internal conflicts driven by ethhead of the National League for Democracy party. nic and geographical disputes, greatly complicated by 21 Once she became the de facto head of government followgroups of armed ethnic minorities seeking to achieve greater ing her party’s victory in the 2012 elections, there were those autonomy and equality from the Union, all of which has led to in the U.N. system who did not want to put a leader who was one of the longest-running civil wars on the planet. This, in seen as a champion of democracy and human rights on the turn, offers a rationalization for the central role that the Tatspot by criticizing her country’s policy and practices toward the madaw, Myanmar’s army, has played since 1962, extending to Rohingyas, which they thought could weaken her position in the political arena (and arguably with high opportunity costs relation to the still powerful military. However, Rosenthal noted for the economic arena).” that, since 2012, “there is an increasing criticism regarding the He then focused on the U.N.’s response to events in Myanlack of leadership displayed by Aung San Suu Kyi, as well as mar, and particularly to the persecution and expulsion of the her unwillingness to take distance from the military.”

In his conclusions, Rosenthal says: John Gee is a free-lance journalist based in Singapore and the author “(W)hile this review centers on events that occurred in the reof Unequal Conflict: The Palestinians and Israel.

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

53

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cent past, the root causes of those events persist and probably have even been aggravated up to the time of writing this review. By any metrics utilized, the treatment accorded to Muslim minorities in Myanmar is incompatible with the political and peace processes launched under the Constitution adopted in 2010. There simply is no way to reconcile the extreme limitations imposed on the Rohingya community with international humanitarian and human rights norms and legislation.

Those grave limitations include statelessness, arbitrary and discriminatory restrictions on freedom of movement, discriminatory treatment in access to services and the means to a dignified livelihood, and now the vexing situation of repatriation and relocation of up to one million desperate people. These problems will not go away and pose huge challenges to Myanmar, its immediate neighbors and the United Nations.”

Secretary-General Guterres was reported to have accepted the recommendations contained in the report and is committed to having them implemented.

Meanwhile, around 730,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees await their return, officially agreed by Myanmar. There is scant evidence of a change in attitude toward them and the violence surrounding their expulsion.

Aye Maung, the leader of a nationalist party in Rakhine state, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for treason in March, but this was not for his incitement of violence against the Muslim minority, but for inflammatory statements made against Myanmar’s government, in which he said it was time to launch an armed struggle against it.

In May, it emerged that seven soldiers convicted of murdering 10 Rohingya men and boys in September 2017, and sentenced to 10 years in prison, with hard labor, had been released after less than a year. Reuters reported that they had served shorter prison time than Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, the Reuters reporters who discovered the victims’ graves and revealed the story of what 54

had happened. The two were arrested in Dec. 2017 and sentenced to seven years in prison under Myanmar’s Official Secrets Act. They were released on May 7, 2019.

On June 5, Aung San Suu Kyi, barred from holding the post of prime minister but effectively the head of Myanmar’s government, paid a visit to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. The Hungarian government website reported: At the meeting the two leaders highlighted that one of the greatest challenges at present for both countries and their respective regions—South East Asia and Europe—is migration. They noted that both regions have seen the emergence of the issue of coexistence with continuously growing Muslim populations.

Myanmar maintains that the Rohingya are Bengali immigrants; Orban refused to accept refugees fleeing the civil wars in Syria and Libya and has endorsed claims of a threatened Muslim takeover of Europe through migration. Behind the bland wording of the official report, it does not seem unreasonable to think that a real meeting of minds took place.

MALAYSIA STRUGGLES WITH NAJIB’S ECONOMIC LEGACY

It was only after the Pakatan Harapan (Alliance of Hope) coalition won the Malaysian general election in 2018 that the full extent of the previous government’s mismanagement of the economy was revealed. In 2015 former prime minister Najib Razak was accused of transferring nearly $700 million from Malaysia’s state-owned investment fund to his personal bank account. That 1MDB scandal already shone a light upon corruption in the government of Razak, but the new government found many other instances of dodgy deals and malpractice. It also found that the outgoing government had planned large-scale projects that would burden the country with enormous debts.

In October 2018, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said that Malaysia could

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

save 300 billion ringgit (U.S. $73 billion) just by cancelling three huge projects: the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore High Speed Rail (HSR), East Coast Rail Line (ECRL) and (in Eastern Malaysia) the Trans-Sabah Gas Pipeline. He said that they were too costly for his government.

Partners in the projects were keen for them to go ahead, and the threat of cancellation provided an opportunity for Malaysia to seek better terms. The month before Mahathir’s statement, Singapore had agreed to a two-year postponement of the HSR. The Sabah pipeline was cancelled. As for the ECRL, Malaysia’s partner in the project was China, and protracted negotiations were undertaken over whether and under what conditions the project might go ahead.

Malaysia stood to gain through having a new railway line running through the poorer and less developed eastern side of the Malay Peninsula, greatly improving regional transport. For China, the line represents an element in its Belt and Road Initiative, intended to create a more efficient infrastructure for facilitating trade between China and the rest of Eurasia. The project was to be implemented by a Chinese company, China Communications Construction Co, largely with Chinese labor, and financed

by China’s Exim Bank. Malaysia cancelled the original project, saying that, even allowing for the compensation that had to be paid for the cancellation, it would save Malaysia a great deal of money. It aimed to renegotiate terms for the project.

An agreement was finally reached on a reduced cost ECRL in April.

The present Malaysian government pledged to an ambitious program of reform when elected, but its ability to carry it out has been circumscribed by the need to overcome the economic mess which was left by its predecessor. This has contributed to a loss of popular support, which its opponents, who include those responsible for that mess, have not failed to capitalize upon. ■ AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

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Special Report

Fakhoury Family Keeps Ottoman-Era Pottery Techniques Alive in Hebron

By Miriam Deprez

PHOTO: MIRIAM DEPREZ

Wesam Alqaraja, a Palestinian from Hebron and a friend of the family, said the Fakhourys are the largest pottery family in the region still using these traditional methods that he knows about. “You might find one person with his brother, or one person with his sons, or just one person, but never seven.”

What’s more, the Fakhoury family lineage of potters extends at least five generations, tracing back to Waheed’s great-grandfather.

“This is the first time we find this span of a family,” Alqaraja said, “So the trace of the same techniques that were used in the Ottoman time is still here. Which means we can prove they are the Waheed Fakhoury (r) works with his son in his Hebron pottery factory. old methods inherited from generation to generation.”

WAHEED FAKHOURY, 74, sits behind a pottery wheel, eyes “To be able to trace a family so far back, with this cultural glued to a television above as his hands instinctively shape a link is very important,” Alqaraja noted. “It is one of the lines silky mass of brown earth dug up from the West Bank city of that connect Palestinian history that is away from politics, Hebron. Within a few minutes he has modeled a large bowl. away from the modern conflict.”

Fakhoury means “potter” in Arabic. When asked how long “It’s just a simple story of survival from one thread of the his family has been doing this craft, Waheed chuckles, “As Palestinian fabric.” long as my name has been Fakhoury.”

A few doors down from Waheed, his younger brother, Abu Waheed is a pottery master who uses a technique he Salam Fakhoury, 50, sits in one of the larger workshops. Sevlearned from his father at the age of seven when he began his eral of his sons are working around him as he sits, cigarette to apprenticeship. The eldest of seven siblings, Waheed and his one side of his mouth, forming a zeer, a clay water cooler trabrothers all took up the pottery trade. Today, five Fakhoury ditionally used across the Mediterranean to cool and store sons including Waheed remain in Hebron, continually adapting water or produce. Each of the Fakhourys make their own their craft to survive the ongoing trade restrictions Israel imunique type of pottery—while Waheed makes large bowls and poses on the West Bank, and cultural changes that have Abu Salam makes water coolers, another brother specializes pulled Palestinians away from traditional crafts. in small flower pots.

Abu Salam stops the pottery wheel and drinks a cup of cofMiriam Deprez is an Australian-born freelance photojournalist. Her fee brought to him by one son while another son, Ahmad images and articles have been published in several international and Fakhoury, 27, hand paints a similar pot. Abu Salam relights his national media outlets, including Mondoweiss, where this was cigarette and motions towards the pot. posted on June 10. She reports from Palestine, Israel, Europe, Russia, “There is a lot of demand in Israel for these pots,” Abu India, Cambodia, Pacific Islands and Australia. For more information visit http://miriamdeprez.com.

Salam said, explaining how his customers in Israel who buy 56

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AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

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the pots believe there are health benefits to storing water in clay and use it as an alternative to plastic containers. Abu Salam also attributes their “high quality of work” to returning business from Israelis. “They appreciate that,” Abu Salam said.

“Before we were making everything for practical things, for storing food and grain. Things that were necessary for the community and everyday life.” Now, Abu Salam said, he has evolved his products to make more decorative pieces for around the home.

The studios are in the south of Hebron in an industrial zone. But 50 years ago, the Fakhourys worked out of Hebron’s Old City, near the Ibrahimi Mosque, or the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a holy site in Islam and Judaism and a flashpoint for violence.

“We cannot go in,” Abu Salam said of the Old City, which today is between checkpoints run by the Israeli army. “It is completely closed because of the Israelis. Especially in Hebron, the old town center is all taken.”

In 1967 Israel occupied the West

Bank, including Hebron. In 1997 the city was divided in half by an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian leadership. H1, the Old City, is controlled by the Palestinian Authority and H2, the outer neighborhoods, is under Israeli civil and security control.

The first and second intifada, Abu Salam said, were periods of difficulty for the business. In the 1990s he exported pots to countries around the world, even making it to Australia.

“This was before the second intifada,” Abu Salam said. But afterwards, “all the entrances to Israel were closed and we [couldn’t] sell there anymore.”

“You need certain documents, you need certain papers which they [Israel] cannot provide [to Palestinians], so a lot of people just left the shops and found something else,” Abu Salam said.

Now the Fakhoury family’s biggest customers are Israelis.

In the same studio, Abu Salam and Waheed’s nephew Abdul Hakim, 33, sit behind another spinning pottery wheel, immersed in the rhythm of the turning clay. Abdul started making pottery at age

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13. When asked if he enjoys working in the family pottery business he shrugs, “no—I cannot lie.”

“Compared to the prices and the money, [the work] is really tiring,” explained Abdul. He is recently engaged and thinking about the children he hopes to have, and he does not want them to follow in his footsteps. “I prefer to send them for education, [to be a] doctor or engineer, rather than to stay here.”

Abdul’s uncle Waheed sees the Fakhoury legacy is reaching an uncertain future. “I have so many grandchildren, but none are interested in pottery,” he explained. “I don’t know if the family will always be potters.”

Alqaraja, the researcher, said more needs to be done to protect the pottery industry, not only for the Fakhoury family business but to ensure the continuation of Palestinian crafts.

“It’s part of the intangible culture that we don’t know about. It’s part of our heritage that Palestinians really need to work to conserve and appreciate,” Alqaraja added. “If you lose these experts, then we will lose our identity.” ■

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coffee and tea sets, cups, plates, trays, mirrors and more online.

Please visit www.MiddleEastBooks.com. Your purchases support the continuation of this centuries-old Palestinian tradition.

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Special Report

Lisbon Exhibit Showcases the Rise of Islamic Art

By Marvine Howe

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A 14TH CENTURY mosque lamp that radiates the swirling Arabic of a Qur’anic verse; a Persian bowl of the 13th century depicting a gazelle in a garden; an Ottoman wall hanging of velvet with silk and silver thread; an illuminated double page from the collected works of Sa’di Iran of 1635. These are highlights of an exhibit on “The Rise of Islamic Art” at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon until Oct. 7, 2019.

Marvine Howe, former new York times bureau chief in Ankara, is the author of al-andalus Rediscovered: iberia’s new Muslims and other Minorities.

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The Gulbenkian Foundation is marking the 150th anniversary of the Armenian oil magnate’s birth with the first comprehensive display of his priceless collection of Middle Eastern art. Gulbenkian fled France for Portugal in 1942 and made Lisbon his home until his death in 1955.

Penelope Cruz, director of the Gulbenkian Museum, admits that the museum’s Islamic works have been “overshadowed” by their European collections, including treasures from Leningrad’s Heritage Museum and Rene Lalique’s Art Nouveau. Noting that a number of major museums are focusing on

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All photos courtesy Calouste Gulbenkian Museum

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collections from the Middle East, the director writes in the exhibit’s catalogue: “Middle Eastern objects in Western museums become ever more poignant as they speak of buildings and places which have been razed to the ground in recent battles. In this way, sadly enough, objects from Syria, for example, speak more urgently to the present than ever before.”

Born in Istanbul, Gulbenkian’s life and his art collection were marked by turbulent times: the end of the Ottoman Empire, two world wars, colonialism and the Armenian diaspora, according to curator Jessica Hallett. In an interview, she said that many ArmeniAUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

1. 12th Century Covered Vase, Raqqa, Syria (4160010) 2. Iznik Tile Panels with Cypress Trees c. 1610 (1565 A-B) 3. 14th Century Mosque Lamp, Egypt or Syria (1033) 4. 13th Century Plate with Gazelle in Garden, Iran (54720) 5. Beaker with flying birds, Mamluk Period, late 13-early 14th Century, Syria or Egypt.

ans became art dealers and formed a trusted network for Gulbenkian. The curator spent 18 months putting together the exhibition of a 100 works from Gulbenkian’s collection and 50 from leading European and American museums. “Our intent was to show the contemporary resonance of Islamic art,” Hallett stressed.

In another commemorative event, the Gulbenkian Foundation announced in July that Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf has been named winner of Gulbenkian’s 2019 Prize for Human Rights for his work to bring Europeans and Arabs together to build a better world. ■

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MUSIC & ARTS

Khaled Jarrar, “Football,” made with cement taken from Israel’s apartheid wall.

STAFF PHOTO PHIL PASQUINI

Artist Creates Soccer Ball From Israel’s Apartheid Wall

ity president before returning to school.

The Ramallah-based artist and cinematographer received his Bachelor in Visual Arts degree in 2011 from the International Academy of Art Palestine. His documentary “The Infiltrators” was wellreceived at the 9th Annual Dubai International Film Festival in 2012, and his many sculptures have been exhibited around the globe to much acclaim.

—Elaine Pasquini

Beirut Photo Exhibit Sheds Light on Palestinians in Exile

On August 30, 1982, Fouad Elkoury was the only photographer accompanying PLO leader Yasser Arafat on a ship from Beirut—his primary base for 10 years— bound for exile in Tunisia. Arafat was forced out of Lebanon following Israel’s invasion of the country.

Elkoury’s photographs from that historic voyage, along with others of Palestinians living in Beirut during the 1980s and 1990s, are on display in Beirut’s Dar ElNimer Arts and Culture gallery. The exhibition, “La Mer Patrie” (Mother Sea), runs through Sept. 27.

Manal Khader, director of the Mina Image Centre in Beirut, curated the exhibit, which was even more poignant as it

opened June 12, the 37-year anniversary of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. During their seven-week siege of Beirut, Israeli military forces killed more than 5,000 people—mostly civilians—and destroyed some 500 buildings in the city.

As soon as Arafat’s fighters left, the right-wing Lebanese Christian Phalange militia massacred Palestinian women, children and elders who remained—all under the eyes of their occupying Israeli allies.

—Elaine Pasquini

WAGING PEACE Lawrence Wilkerson Reflects on Similarities Between Push for War In Iraq and Iran

STAFF PHOTO PHIL PASQUINI, WITH PERMISSION

While British artist Banksy and others have used Israel’s illegally built apartheid wall in the West Bank as a canvas for Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who helped sell elaborate murals, Khaled Jarrar utilized the ill-fated 2003 Iraq War as Secretary of the enormous structure for a different State Colin Powell’s chief of staff, sees form of protest. In 2012, the Palestinian disturbing similarities between the buildartist created a soccer ball from cement up to the Iraq War and current efforts to he personally chipped off the wall using a get the U.S. entangled in a military conhammer and chisel. The resultant “protest frontation with Iran. On June 28, Wilkerball” was on display through July 21 in the son joined journalist Mehdi Hasan’s “De“Football and the Arab World” exhibition constructed” podcast to reflect on the curat L’Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. rent warmongering efforts of the Trump Alongside Jarrar’s unique ball is a administration. video of the 43-year-old vigorously chipAs in 2003, Wilkerson said “raw and unping at the wall and collecting the brofinished” intelligence is currently being ken pieces. Since attempting to deused to push pro-war narratives. In the stroy the wall is illegal, the artist’s build-up to the Iraq War, he noted, friends who videotaped his actions Paul Wolfowitz of the Pentagon’s Ofput themselves—and him—at risk of fice of Special Plans fed Vice Presiarrest and prosecution by Israeli audent Dick Cheney with unfinished intelthorities. ligence to help sell the war. Today, Jarrar also used concrete from the Wilkerson observed that “think thanks” apartheid wall in his well-known such as the Foundation for Defense of sculpture series “Upcycle the Wall” Democracies are being similarly used and his “Buddy Bear,” which consist to provide the administration with intelof objects that represent Palestinians ligence and analysis that is unsound, living under Israeli occupation. but fits their hawkish policy desires.

Upon graduating from the Palestine The media has learned very little Polytechnic University, Jarrar joined from the Iraq War, Wilkerson lamented, the local police force in order to earn and is again complicit in promoting a money to continue his studies. Shortly war by uncritically magnifying the adthereafter, he was recruited to join ministration’s claims about Iran. Any Yasser Arafat’s Presidential Guard, narratives that push for military conwhich offered to pay his university frontation ought to be met with skeptifees. He worked for several years “Arafat from the Back,” taken in 1982. Fouad Elk- cism by the media, not taken at face protecting the late Palestinian Author- oury, photographer. value and regurgitated, he said.

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these consequences. “He actually said back to me and [Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs] Jim Kelly, ‘you guys do the war, I don’t do war.’”

Wilkerson Is John Bolton (r) following Dick Cheney’s (l) playbook for starting a war? noted that Powell connecting Iraqi President Saddam Hussain sented. He noted that in 2003, Iran, which to al-Qaeda “resonated with the American was already cooperating with the U.S. in people” and most effectively sold the war, Afghanistan, offered the U.S. a “grand even though it was a complete lie. There bargain” in which it was willing to reach an are similar attempts from Pompeo, he understanding on a plethora of issues that noted, to suggest that Iran is in bed with have stymied the bilateral relationship for al-Qaeda, a connection Wilkerson said is decades. Instead of taking Iran up on the patently false. Pomepo is making these offer, or even hearing them out, Washingclaims not so much to sell the necessity of ton simply ignored the overture. Then-Nawar, but to make sure any military con- tional Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice frontation with Iran is permissible under and other top officials “argued that this the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military wasn’t a serious offer and that it had been ‘embellished by the Europeans’” (who Force (AUMF).

Just as fringe Iraqi expatriates had an were the intermediaries), Wilkerson said. oversized influence over the Iraq War ef- “No one wanted a breakthrough, espefort, so too does a fringe extremist Iranian cially Dick Cheney,” he added. “Dick Chgroup, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), eney stymied the functional statutory decihave a disproportionate sway over Wash- sion-making process for four years while I ington, Wilkerson said. Despite being was there by simply not letting Iran come listed as a foreign terrorist organization by up for a policy decision, and it never did.”

—Dale Sprusansky the U.S. government until 2012 and having a cult-like mentality, U.S. leaders from Reporting on Civilian Casualties in both political parties regularly engage with the MEK and receive large honorariums The War Against ISIS for appearing at their conferences and re- New America held an event in Washington, gurgitating their regime change talking DC on July 16 to discuss how mainstream points. “You’re talking about the equiva- U.S. news outlets covered civilian casuallent in many respects of Ahmed Chalabi ties in the U.S.-led war against ISIS in Syria and the Iraqi National Congress” who and Iraq. The discussion was inspired by a pushed the Bush administration into the report recently released by Airwars titled, Iraq War, Wilkerson said.

“U.S. Media Coverage of Civilian Harm in The bottom line, Wilkerson said, is that the War Against So-Called Islamic State.” the continual push for war since 9/11 Journalist Alexa O’Brien, the author of shows that hawks will never stop cam- the report, said her research found that paigning for armed confrontation, even if mainstream news coverage of civilian casumore peaceful and viable paths are pre- alties was “largely absent during key periGETTY IMAGES

Wilkerson recalled how Cheney cunningly used the media to legitimize the administration’s claims about Iraq. “I know that Dick Cheney would take raw intelligence, feed it to the New York Times, the New York Times would then print it frontpage above the fold, and Cheney would then cite it as verified,” he said.

Just as many believe President Donald Trump does not actually want a war with Iran, Wilkerson believes President George W. Bush did not necessarily want a war with Iraq, but was pushed to that decision by advisers, like Cheney, who capitalized on his desire to buoy his chances of reelection and to avenge his father’s “failure” to remove Saddam Hussain during the First Gulf War. Trump has been adamant about his disdain for new wars, but Wilkerson believes his decision to employ hawks such as National Security Adviser John Bolton could be a devastating mistake. The president thinks Bolton is helping him apply the pressure necessary to force Iran to negotiate a “better deal,” Wilkerson speculated, while Bolton is actually attempting to lay the groundwork for a war Trump can’t refuse. Trump, like Bush, is also looking for something to boost his reelection prospects, Wilkerson said, while Hasan observed that opposing anything endorsed by President Barack Obama is Trump’s deep-seeded motivation for his rejection of the nuclear deal and confrontational approach toward Iran.

“John Bolton and [Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo look a lot like the characters from the Bush administration, with Pompeo being the sycophant and Bolton being the leader,” Wilkerson opined. “I don’t think the president wants war, but the circle around him does.”

Based on an encounter from 2002, Wilkerson believes Bolton truly does not appreciate the horror of war. When Bolton was serving as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control in the Bush administration and pushing for a military confrontation with North Korea, Wilkerson said he was dispatched to his office to explain the devastating ramifications of such a war.

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ularly refused to cooperate with her inquiries. The military regularly told her that strikes she was investigating did not take place, even though the military had publicly released video footage of the attacks and she had numerous on-the-ground testimonials. She also observed videos being removed after she filed official inquires. “I was able to learn that they weren’t logging all of their airstrikes, which is a major problem when it comes to investigating harm,” she said.

Azmat Khan shares her quest to get to the truth about civilian casualties in Iraq and Syria.

Khan was only able to make headway and force the military to concede it initially provided incorrect information by “being methodical, getting specific and always pushing back,” she said. Her experience shows the “fundamental problem” of news outlets regularly relying on government-provided data to report on civilian casualties, she noted.

O’Brien outlined a number of ways news organization can better report on civilian casualties, the most essential being a “clear editorial mandate for civilian harm coverage at media outlets.”

Woods argued that there is no substitute for on-the-ground reporting. “Field reporting is worth investing in,” he said. “If you’re going to cover a conflict that your own forces are involved in, you have to have people on the ground. They have to be there, they have to talk to communities.”

Khan said media outlets need to start treating civilian casualties as seriously as they treat the deaths of U.S. soldiers. “You tend to see American reporters investigating the costs of war most when American

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SCREENSHOT FROM YOUTUBE

ods of the conflict.” This, she concluded, was the result of a dearth of on-the-ground reporters in conflict zones, newsrooms deprioritizing civilian deaths and the Pentagon press corps failing to inquire about civilian fatalities during official press briefings.

The U.S. government has acknowledged 1,300 civilian deaths resulting from U.S.-led coalition actions in Iraq and Syria, while Airwars, an organization committed to tracking civilian deaths in conflicts, estimates the number of civilian deaths at 8,000-12,000 people.

Chris Woods, executive director of Airwars, believes the official government figures are low, but said the government has done a better job of acknowledging civilian casualties in recent years. (Very few civilian deaths were officially recorded in the early years of the war.) He surmised this initial failure to acknowledge civilian casualties was due to military leadership being overly confident in their ability to carry out surgical strikes. “They got caught-up in their own narrative of ‘precision strikes’ and they didn’t really know what precision strikes did in this kind of high-intensity warfare,” he said.

Greg Jaffe, national security correspondent at the Washington Post, believes the military is committed to reducing civilian deaths, but does a poor job of critiquing its behavior. “I don’t think they want to learn from their mistakes, and the only way to get better is to really interrogate your mistakes,” he said. This intransigence, he surmises, stems from a fear that enemies could use high civilian casualty rates as propaganda, a desire to project the U.S as the “good guys” fighting on the “right side,” and the notion that bad things inevitably happen in war.

Investigative reporter Azmat Khan said dedicated journalists are desperately needed to hold the U.S. military to account when it comes to civilian casualties. Khan spent years on the ground investigating civilian deaths in Iraq and Syria. Her work culminated in an acclaimed article titled “The Uncounted,” published by New York Times Magazine in November 2017.

Khan said her investigation required diligence and persistence, as the military reg-

soldiers are dying,” she said. “There was very little interest in this issue [of civilian casualties]. It was much sexier to talk about the atrocities of ISIS because what they were doing was barbaric and unsettling to so many.”

Woods said coverage of two different periods of the war displays the power of the media. During the late 2016 fighting in east Mosul, more than 1,000 people were reportedly killed in U.S. coalition strikes, he noted, yet there was virtually no media coverage. “I just find it astonishing that at such an intense part of the war, there were no news clips in terms of civilian harm,” he said. (O’Brien noted that during this same period, the U.S. media was six times more likely to report on civilian casualties inflicted

by Russian and Syrian government forces fighting in Aleppo than U.S.-led forces in Mosul.)

A few months later during the assault on west Mosul, Woods noted that the media actually questioned the rate of civilian casualties and perhaps saved lives. “The U.S. media really did its job,” he said. “It really got in on the ground, did the reporting. The coalition reacted. They scaled back their bombing by 30 percent, and civilian harm fell by 30 percent. There was a direct link between the two, we felt.”

—Dale Sprusansky

Politics, Water and Discontent in Basra

Within a span of 48 hours in September 2018, protesters ignited into flames the headquarters of the ruling Islamic Da’Wa Party, the state-run television station, the Iranian consulate and nearly every other government building within Basra, Iraq.

Nine months later, on June 6, 2019, the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC hosted a panel discussion on the protests and the fallout felt throughout the country.

All four of the panelists agreed that the protests were the result of widespread discontent about governance, the economy and quality of life.

James “Mac” Skelton, the acting director of the Institute of Regional and International Studies, said the protesters placed the blame for Iraq’s struggles on AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

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Going forward, Abbas the government, not on outpredicts protests to escaside factors such as ecolate even further, expecting nomic forces. “They [the a “large-scale” protest by protesters] don’t really bethe end of 2019. Skelton, lieve it is macro structural on the other hand, was less or macro economic drivers sure. [that] are the problem,” he Skelton said that while said. “They believe it is the the issues that caused the party-run system, the party2018 protests are still in run control over employplace, the protests themment networks, as well as selves were random and the party-run deterioration not well organized, leading of the entire governance him to argue that nothing is structure.” certain. “I think we just Scholar Bilal Wahab said that while the political sys- (L-r) Basma Alloush, Mac Skelton, moderator Randa Slim, Akeel Abbas and have to realize that social movements in Iraq are untem was once sectarian, it Bilal Wahab. predictable,” he said. “Of has devolved into a patronage system where the main focus is on where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers course there will be protests, but will there providing for those within the party system meet (Al Qunrah, Iraq). However, she be a spark that will ignite this level of disitself rather than those outside of it. “The pointed out that citizens in Basra are also content? I don’t think we know.”

—Aaron Carter political system seems to reinvent itself contributing raw waste. This worsens the rather than evolving to a better system—a already poor situation, for which Alloush What is the Future for Economic system that can provide services, protec- blames the government for not impletion and accountability to the citizenry,” he menting a sound waste management Diversification in Arab Gulf States? structure. said.

On July 9, the Arab Gulf States Institute in Consequently, many citizens are suffer- Washington, DC held an event to discuss Akeel Abbas, a professor at the American University in Iraq, agreed with Wahab ing from waterborne diseases. According the future of economic diversification in that this patronage system is failing the to U.N. statistics, the top waterborne dis- the Arab Gulf states. The discussion feacountry, but he believes that the opposi- eases in 2011 were Typhoid (over 15,000 tured economists Ziad Daoud, the chief tion is making progress in eradicating the cases), Hepatitis B (over 4,000 cases) Middle East economist for Bloomberg existing system—tangible progress that and dysentery (over 1,000 cases).

Economics, and Sona Varma, a lead Concerning the water quantity, much of economist for the Middle East and North previous protests did not seem to achieve. “The 2018 protest in Basra actu- the issue is out of the government’s con- Africa at the World Bank. ally sent a shock wave throughout the po- trol, as the region has experienced wideDaoud and Varma both said there is spread drought as a result of climate much progress to be made when it comes litical class in Iraq,” he said.

While the main issue the panel focused change. However, a contributing factor to to economic diversification in the GCC. on was political flaws within Iraq, they the low quantity of water flowing into For Gulf countries to fulfill their desire to noted that the citizens’ political grievances Basra, and most of Iraq for that matter, is attain an economy that is not dependent are tied to ongoing concerns surrounding reliance on Iraq’s neighbors in the Middle on oil, they need to address the labor East. water, electricity and security issues. market, their domestic “social contracts” “Iraq is dependent on its neighbors for with citizens and the balance between the Rural people are fleeing their communities for cities as a result of poor living con- about 70 percent of its water supply, and private and public sector, among other ditions, and concerns about water quality in the recent years that water supply has things, the analysts said. and quantity, among other issues. Accord- been reduced by almost half,” Alloush The panelists mostly focused on Saudi ing to the U.N., only 77 percent of individ- said.

Arabia, which produced 12.42 million barWhile both water quantity and quality rels of oil per day in 2018, accounting for uals in Iraq’s rural communities have access to safe drinking water, compared to problems persist, they are not indepen- 12 percent of the world’s oil production. dent of one another. According to Alloush, Despite this large output, the Saudi Ara98 percent of individuals in urban areas.

Basma Alloush, the advocacy and com- many of the rivers are heavily blocked by bian government claims to have already munications officer at the Norwegian trash and waste, creating man-made made steps toward diversification, citing Refugee Council USA, said that the pri- dams that slow the flow of water while si- an increase in the non-oil sector’s permary point of contamination is occurring multaneously contaminating it. centage of overall GDP (59 percent). “The AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

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ter for Arab Citizens in Israel, launched the conversation with remarks about the inequality Palestinian citizens of Israel encounter in everyday life. Israel’s 2018 Basic Law defines the country as the “nation-state of the Jewish people,” a classification that blatantly discriminates against the country’s Palestinian minority. “We cannot live in a reality where we are second-class citizens as a result of a constitutional law that says that Arabic is not the language of the state, and that segregated housing is legal,” Farah stated. He went on to call for a new paradigm in which equality and human rights, rather than nationalism, is stressed.

Farah, a believer in the one-state solution, said the U.S. must stop facilitating Israel’s depiction of itself as a “Jewish state”—to the detriment of its inclusivity.

He criticized not just the Trump administration, but past U.S. administrations for using and endorsing this discriminatory language in official statements and proposals.

Shibley Telhami, the Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, noted that a recent poll found that at least 50 percent of Jewish Israelis want to see Arabs expelled or transferred from Israel. He linked this to “a bolstering of Jewish identity [in Israel] coupled with seeing Arabs as the ‘other.’”

Telhami criticized the “discourse of focus on separation,” saying that by focusing on ethnicity and religion as two entities that define people, political leaders are reinforcing inequality.

Israel’s emphasis on ethno-religious nationalism, he said, has implications

Jafar Farah.

PHOTO AARON CARTER

PHOTO A. CARTER

main policy priorities for Gulf countries should be to create an attractive environment for private investment. “It means competition, because right now I would argue the decks are still stacked in favor of the public sector,” she said.

One World Bank ranking that Varma believes signifies problems in the Gulf is the (L-r) Ziad Daoud, Sona Varma and moderator Robert Mogielnicki “Human Capital Index.” reflect on efforts to wean economies off oil.

The HCI is “measured decline in oil’s share of the economy has in terms of the productivity of the next happened because oil prices have de- generation of workers relative to the clined over the past few years,” Daoud benchmark of complete education and full said. “That’s not the type of diversification health,” according to the World Bank. The you want to have.” Moreover, oil still ac- index ranks countries against each other counts for 67 percent of Saudi Arabia’s on a scale of zero to one, with one being the best possible outcome. The GCC revenue and 80 percent of its exports.

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman countries, collectively, score better than put in place the Vision 2030 plan several other Arab countries, but there is still years ago, which lays out ambitious goals much work to be done. The GCC counfor the country’s social and economic de- tries have an average global ranking of 60 velopment. With 2030 more than a (out of 157) and an average HCI score of decade away, it is difficult to assess the .62. The highest of the GCC countries, progress toward those goals. Luckily, the Bahrain, ranked 47th with a score of .67.

Despite the tremendous amount of government also created the National Transformation Program in 2016, setting work to be done, Varma said she is hopegoals for 2020. Daoud assessed the ful the Arab Gulf countries will succeed in country’s progress toward these goals on their quests for economic diversification. fiscal policy, economic diversification and “We’ve seen tremendous commitment at the highest levels, in all of these counthe labor market.

Daoud said that Saudi Arabia has done tries, in order to pursue diversification, but well on the fiscal side, poorly on diversifi- the devil lies in the details—and that’s cation and okay on the labor market. what we’re hoping we can work through However, in each of the three indicators with a little bit of luck and perseverance,” —Aaron Carter concerning economic diversification, she said.

Saudi Arabia has moved further away What About the Palestinian from its 2020 target. For foreign direct investment, Saudi Arabia’s goal was to Citizens of Israel? reach 70 billion riyals ($18.6 billion) in FDI On June 11, the Foundation for Middle by 2020, but the current investment sits at East Peace held a panel discussion at the just 12 billion riyals ($3.2 billion). The Middle East Institute in Washington, DC same lackluster story holds true for the to discuss the current situation in Israelicountry’s global ranking for “ease of doing Palestinian relations, with a specific focus business” and “global competitiveness.” on the treatment of Palestinian citizens of The fact that Saudi Arabia has attracted Israel. less foreign investment since 2016 is a Jafar Farah, the founder and director of major concern. Varma said one of the the Mossawa Center, the Advocacy Cen-

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Jewish National Fund Gala Met With Protest in Manitoba

A who’s who of Manitoba’s business and political leaders gathered for the Jewish National Fund (JNF) of Manitoba and Saskatchewan’s annual Negev Gala on May 27. About 20 individuals from local activist groups gathered outside the venue to greet gala attendees with a protest.

Some guests—as they emerged from their limousines at Manitoba’s Centennial Concert Hall for the night’s event—appeared rather shocked to encounter a group of demonstrators from a variety of social justice organizations. Activists held placards designed by local Palestinian leader and businesswoman Rana Abdulla which featured slogans like “Don’t Shoot, It’s Only a Rock.” The action began with a rousing chant of “Stop Israel Apartheid,” which did not seem to please security at the event.

This year’s gala honored Steven Schip-

per, former director of the Manitoba Theatre, and a long-time Zionist. Schipper is also an ardent supporter of the new Winnipeg chapter of StandWithUs Canada (the first chapter in Canada outside of Toronto). The University of Winnipeg Student’s Association recently voted down a motion in favor of BDS, partly through the efforts of StandWithUs Canada. The organization is part of a worldwide group dedicated to fighting what they consider “antiIsrael” initiatives, such as BDS activity on university campuses.

The JNF protest, an annual event of Independent Jewish Voices-Manitoba, included participants from Peace Alliance Winnipeg, Winnipeg Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, Canadian Palestinian Association of Manitoba and Mennonite Central Committee-Manitoba.

Independent Jewish Voices-Manitoba also handed out postcards about their ongoing campaign requesting the Canada Revenue Agency cancel the charitable tax status of the Jewish National Fund.

—Candice Bodnaruk

DIPLOMATIC DOINGS Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan Makes First Official U.S. Visit

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throughout the broader Arab world. He cited Egypt as an example: “Forty years later [after the 1979 peace treaty], Egyptians are even less accepting of Israel.

They see Israel as the enemy and most of it has to do with the way that Israel is defining the conflict and treating the Palestinians.”

Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute (AAI), voiced her observation that “the failure of the twostate option…is by design.” She speculated that the Trump administration’s blatant support for Israel is perhaps a positive development, as it helps “rip off the Band-Aid” and prompt a more open discussion about the conflict than occurred in past decades.

Jeremy Ben-Ami provided some contrasting views to the three preceding voices. As the president of the liberal Zionist group J-Street, Ben-Ami holds a passionate commitment to the State of Israel and the two-state solution. He pointed out that there is currently a conversation happening in the AmericanJewish establishment about what is really going on in Israel, but that there is still a great deal of work to be done in terms of holding Israel accountable to true Jewish values. “I will continue to fight for a state that continues to live up to the highest of ideals that I was raised on,” he stated. “It is absolutely inconceivable to me that the thousands of years of oppression in Jewish history did not teach us about justice sufficiently that when we have power, we don’t know how to exercise it justly.”

Ben-Ami defended his stance on the two-state debate, saying that the twostate solution is often described as impossible, but he believes it just needs to be addressed in a different manner. He agreed with the previously mentioned sentiment that the term “Jewish state” is detrimental to the entire discussion because it attaches a religious component to what should be a democratic state. Focus should instead be on guaranteeing Jews and Palestinians both have states that ensure self-determination and full rights for all people.

—Yasmine Mattoussi

A protester in Canada disputes the so-called charitable aim of the Jewish National Fund.

In late July, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan participated in his first official visit to the Untied States since assuming office in August 2018. During his stay in Washington, DC, the prime minister met with President Donald Trump and other U.S. officials, as well as the leaders of the IMF and World Bank. He also made a public appearance at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) on July 23, where he discussed various domestic and international issues facing Pakistan.

Khan began his talk at USIP by strongly condemning the long history of corruption in Pakistan. In 2018, Transparency International ranked Pakistan as the 117th most corrupt country, out of 180 countries.

The prime minister said corruption has its roots in the colonial era, when obstructing taxes and depriving the British colonists of revenue was not viewed as

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unpatriotic or problematic, since the British were syphoning money out of the country anyway. In a free Pakistan, however, Khan stressed that corruption only serves to impoverish the country and its citizens. He attributed his electoral success to his ability to demonstrate to Pakistanis the relationship between poverty and corruption.

Khan noted corruption is not just a Pakistani issue. “The biggest problem the world faces is about a trillion dollars leaving developing and poor countries and going either to offshore accounts or to Western countries,” he said. Corruption, he added, “is causing more deaths than terrorism, than drugs. The amount of people dying of hunger, disease, lack of education, not having clean drinking water is because the ruling elites in the developing world are taking that money [that should be used on vital government services] out and parking it in offshore accounts or Western countries.”

Corruption is also tied to weak national institutions, Khan said. In order to take money out of the country, corrupt elites need to make sure institutions tasked with stopping corruption are weak and ineffective. “If the institutions are strong, they would not be able to take the money out,” he noted. “For instance, if your anti-corruption body is strong, if your justice system is working and robust, if your taxation department—if these institutions are strong, you cannot take money out of the country.”

Khan believes his government is making strides in combating corruption, but stressed that uprooting corruption takes time. “You can recover the money, but to build institutions takes time,” he commented.

Perhaps looking to lead by example, Khan made news by flying commercially to the U.S., arriving at Dulles International Airport on a Qatar Airways flight.

He also opted to stay at the official residence of Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S., instead of at a hotel.

The prime minister had harsh words for the political parties that governed Pakistan over the past ten years, calling them a “mafia” that abused the country 66

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan speaks at the United States Institute of Peace. The leader shared his distain for corruption and his hope that the U.S. and Pakistan are entering a new era of trust and cooperation. financially. In 2008, he noted the country’s debt was six trillion rupees ($37 billion), and is now 30 trillion rupees ($186 billion). “The number one challenge [when he assumed office] was inheriting a country which was bankrupt,” he said.

For Pakistan to recover from its debt, it will need to dramatically expand its tax base, Khan said. He noted that just 1.5 million of the country’s 210 million people paid taxes last year, and that half of all tax revenue went toward servicing debts.

“We now are in the very difficult process of convincing everyone to come into the tax net,” he said. “There are a lot of strikes going on right now, but we feel that we will be able to overcome them, because it’s imperative that the Pakistani people pay taxes.”

Khan tied foreign policy to domestic progress. Pakistan needs good relations with its neighbors because the country needs peace and stability to enable economic progress, he said. “The biggest problem India and Pakistan face is poverty, and the best way we can reduce poverty is if we start trading with each other,” he said.

On the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, Khan was blunt but also diplomatic and forward-looking.

“The U.S. is a superpower. You have

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

to have good relations with the U.S., whether you like it or not,” he said, grinning, and to laughter from the audience.

He strongly criticized the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, saying Washington has long misunderstood the country. He recalled visiting top Democratic leaders in 2009 and urging them to push for a new approach in Afghanistan. “I realized they had no idea,” he said. “People in the U.S. had no idea about the history of Afghanistan and the sort of conflict they got involved in.”

Washington has also failed to appreciate the grave price Pakistan paid in the war on terror, Khan said. He noted that 70,000 Pakistanis lost their lives due to the war in Afghanistan, and yet the U.S. viewed Pakistan with suspicion and suspected they were playing “a double game” in the conflict.

Yet, Khan said he believes the U.S. and Pakistan have reached a positive turning point. Both countries now agree “there is no military solution in Afghanistan” and are making progress toward peace, he said. “The reason why I'm happy leaving the U.S. this time is because we have a relationship now based on a mutual interest, which is peace in Afghanistan.”

—Dale Sprusansky AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

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B •O •O •K •S Our American Israel: The Story of an Entangled Alliance

By Amy Kaplan, Harvard University Press, 2018, hardcover, 333 pp. MEB: $23.

Our American Israel is the best and most recent of a surprisingly few books that analyze the cultural foundations of the U.S.-Israeli “special relationship.” While a vast literature exists on the Palestine conflict and on American Middle East diplomacy, relatively little has been done to probe the deeper roots of the American-Israel “entangled alliance.”

A highly respected American Studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Kaplan explores the “vast reservoir of narratives and images, emotions and beliefs about America’s special kinship with Israel.” These forces forged an “unbreakable bond” that renders the “special relationship” more akin to a marriage, with its “aura of timelessness and immutability,” than to a typical state-to-state alliance.

Settler colonialism, race and religion are among the interconnected forces that have long bonded Israel and the United States. “Parallel conditions of settler colonialism did not alone create an American identification with Zionist pioneers,” Kaplan notes, but they are a key factor. In the years leading up to the partition of Palestine, Zionist settlement “resonated with American narratives of the frontier’s transformative power.” The Zionist collective agricultural communities in Palestine

Walter L. Hixson, the Washington Report’s contributing editor, is the author of Israel’s Armor: The Israel Lobby and the First Generation of the Palestine Conflict (available from Middle East Books and More), along with several other books and journal articles.

He has been a professor of history for 36 years, achieving the rank of distinguished professor.

AuGusT/sePTembeR 2019

Reviewed by Walter L. Hixson inspired American liberals, who “imagined New Deal-style public projects bringing social equality to the Middle East.”

Settler colonization was inextricably linked with race. “As European Jews in Palestine became whiter—and more civilized—the Arabs among whom they settled appeared darker and more primitive,” Kaplan explains. Having long celebrated the violent “taming” of their own frontier, the Americans, as a British politician observed at the time of partition, “will give the Jewish settler in Palestine the benefit of the doubt, and regard the Arab as the aboriginal who must go down before the march of progress.”

Religion, of course, played a profound role in building American support for Zionism. “Parallels with biblical Israel conferred an exceptional identity on the United States” from the outset, Kaplan notes. Following World War II Americans moderated their own history of antiSemitism and embraced Israel, partly in atonement for their prior inaction in the face of the Nazi genocide. Modernists such as the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr sided with Israel against the Arabs, who could justifiably be removed to the “vast hinterland of the Middle East.” Millions of evangelical Protestants gradually hopped on the Israeli bandwagon for their own fundamentalist reasons.

Most American Jews ritually backed Israel, as did most postwar liberals. The Nation received a $50,000 grant from the Jewish Agency in return for “promoting the Zionist cause among American liberals and foreign delegates to the United States.” Freda Kirchwey, the non-Jewish editor of The Nation from 1933 to 1955, was a staunch Zionist who embraced a “vastly exaggerated narrative of the [Palestinian] mufti’s responsibility for the Final Solution” and thus helped kick off what has been called the “Holocaust industry.” Eleanor Roosevelt saw in Zionist progress the potential of a “model state that would promote an international New Deal.”

Role of Popular Culture

As a work of cultural history, Kaplan’s book goes beyond wars, agreements, and the other conventional aspects of diplomacy to focus more on the role of non-state actors. “Novelists, filmmakers, journalists, intellectuals, museum curators,” she notes, “have at times been more effective than formal lobbyists.”

No better example exists than the book and film Exodus, which had a sweeping impact in building sympathy and support for Israel. Leon Uris’s novel, published in 1958, sold millions of copies only to be outdone by the film, directed

by Otto Preminger and released in 1960.

The book and film celebrated the fight for Zionist migrants to Palestine at the time of Israel’s origins. In both the novel and film, as opposed to the actual 1947 incident, the ship-bound European Jews got to Palestine safely. Some reviewers described it as a “Jewish Western” glorifying the masculine courage of the embattled Jewish migrants.

The film featured A-list star Paul Newman as Ari (“lion” in Hebrew) Ben Canaan, a handsome, white sabra who wins over a doubting blonde American beauty, played by Eva Marie Saint. The film’s riveting theme song won an Oscar for best original score. The born-again Christian Pat Boone wrote and sang the theme song, including the lyrics, “This land is mine, God gave this land to me.”

As Kaplan explains, the novel and film buried “the stereotype of a weak victim,” replacing it with a “new Jew” who “embodied the virtues and aspirations of the American past and present.” At the same time, both the film and the novel “effaced the violent dispossession of Palestinians.” The portrait of Israeli innocence and self-defense “precluded viewing Arab refugees as motivated by a desire to recover their homes.”

Unsurprisingly, Israelis lavished praise on Uris and Preminger as they celebrated and promoted the novel and the film. “As a piece of propaganda,” de-

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clared the Israeli patriarch David BenGurion, who was surely an expert on the subject, “it’s the greatest thing ever written about Israel.”

By 1967 Exodus had “provided a ready-made template” for siding with the courageous “little Israel” fighting for its life against uncivilized Arab foes who allegedly sought to drive it “into the sea.”

The realities of the June 1967 war, which Israel initiated and became a prelude to a prolonged and illegal occupation, were easily subsumed by the widespread American cultural identification with the Zionists. Israel’s quick and decisive victory in the Six-Day War coincided and contrasted sharply with the prolonged, unwinnable and horribly destructive American war in Southeast Asia, thus producing growing admiration and support for Israel.

By this time the cultural identification was well entrenched, as Americans overwhelmingly viewed Israel as a besieged outpost of courageous refugees seeking

to survive the senseless onslaughts of barbaric foes who engaged in hostage taking, bombings, and other acts of terror. In the 1980s the brutal Israeli invasion of Lebanon, followed by the onset of the Palestinian Intifada, began to erode some of the uncritically pro-Israel perceptions in the U.S., but Kaplan shows that while liberals did criticize Israel, they persisted in depicting it as simultaneously aggrieved. They thus remained blinded to the essence of the conflict as a product of settler state aggression and illegal occupation.

The September 11, 2001 attacks brought yet another cultural shift, from “the Americanization of Israel to the Israelization of America.” By “recasting the United States in Israel’s image as existentially threatened,” the 9/11 attacks “joined the nations to each other as innocent victims of evil forces and bestowed moral righteousness on their pursuit of indomitability.” The Global War on Terror thus further ensconced the

cultural ties between the special allies, undergirding unstinting U.S. support for Israel amid the collapse of the “peace process.”

Kaplan leaves us with an important, well-constructed and also well-illustrated book handsomely produced by Harvard University Press. If there is any weakness it is the absence of emphasis on the role of the Israel lobby in the history of the special relationship. Kaplan’s overriding emphasis on culture leads to a corresponding de-emphasis on the political aspects of the special relationship.

She does not ignore AIPAC and other lobby entities but neither are they fully examined and integrated into the broader narrative.

A study integrating the politics and propaganda as well as the culture within the unique history of the Israeli-American special relationship has yet to be written.

As for the cultural side of the relationship, Amy Kaplan has made an important and enduring contribution. ■

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AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

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• EAST • BOOKS • AND • MORE MIDDLE Literature Films Pottery Solidarity Items More *

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SUMMER 2019 Our American Israel: The Story of an Entangled Alliance, by Amy Kaplan, Harvard University Press, 2018, hardcover, 368 pp. MEB: $23. Our American Israel tells the story of how a Jewish state in the Middle East came to resonate profoundly with a broad range of Americans in the 20th century. Beginning with debates about Zionism after World War II, Israel’s identity has been entangled with America’s belief in its own exceptional nature. Now, in the 21st century, Amy Kaplan challenges the associations underlying this special alliance. This book is reviewed in this issue by Washington Report contributing editor Walter Hixson.

Teach for Arabia: American Universities, Liberalism, and Transnational Qatar, by Neha Vora, Stanford University Press, 2018, paperback, 232 pp. MEB: $23. Teach for Arabia offers an ethnographic account of the experiences of students, faculty and administrators in Education City, Qatar. Home to branch campuses of six elite U.S. universities, Education City represents the Qatari government’s multibillion-dollar investment over the last two decades to grow a local knowledge-based economy. While leaders have eagerly welcomed the institutions, not all citizens have embraced these U.S. universities. Some critics see them as emblematic of a turn away from traditional values toward Westernization. Qatari students who attend these schools often feel stereotyped and segregated within their space.

When We Were Arabs: A Jewish Family’s Forgotten History, by Massoud Hayoun, The New Press, 2019, hardcover, 304 pp. MEB: $20. There was a time when being “Arab” didn’t necessarily mean you were Muslim. It was a time when Oscar Hayoun, a Jewish Arab, strode along the Nile in a fashionable suit, long before he and his father arrived at the port of Haifa to join the Zionist state only to find themselves hosed down with the pesticide DDT and left unemployed. In that time, Arabness was a mark of cosmopolitanism and intellectualism.

Today, in the age of the Likud and ISIS, Oscar’s son, the Jewish Arab journalist Massoud Hayoun, whom Oscar raised in Los Angeles, finds his voice by telling his family’s story.

Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel, by Andrew Ross, Verso, 2019, hardcover, 328 pp. MEB: $23. Andrew Ross’s engrossing, surprising, and gracefully written story of the ancient trade of Palestinian stonemasonry shows how the stones of historic Palestine, and Palestinian labor, have been used to build the state of Israel, and in the process, constructing “facts on the ground” even while the industry is central to Palestinians’ own efforts to erect bulwarks against the occupation.

Modern Egypt: What EveryOne Needs to Know, by Bruce Rutherford and Jeannie Sowers, Oxford University Press, 2018, paperback, 232 pp. MEB: $14.

While the authors begin by presenting an overview of modern Egyptian history, they then focus on present-day Egyptian politics, society, demography, culture and religion. They analyze Egypt’s core problems, including deepening authoritarianism, high unemployment, widespread poverty, rapid population growth and pollution.

War Over Peace: One Hundred Years of Israel’s Militaristic Nationalism, by Uri Ben-Eliezer, University of California Press, 2019, hardcover, 328 pp. MEB: $30. Covering every conflict in Israel’s history, Ben-Eliezer reveals that Israeli nationalism was born ethnic and militaristic and has embraced these characteristics to this day. He shows the militaristic nationalism that drives Israel to find military solutions for its national problems is based on the idea of a “sacred” homeland.

The Parisian, by Isabella Hammad, Grove Atlantic, 2019, hardcover, 566 pp. MEB: $20.

The Parisian illuminates a pivotal period of Palestinian history through the journey and romances of Midhat Kamal, from his studies in France during World War I to his return to Palestine at the dawn of its battle for independence. Kamal is the son of a wealthy textile merchant from Nablus, a town in Ottoman Palestine. A dreamer, a romantic, and an aesthete, in 1914 he leaves to study medicine in France and falls in love. When Kamal returns to Nablus, the entire region is erupting with nationalist fervor, and he must find a way to cope with his conflicting loyalties and the expectations of his community.

Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History, by Nur Masalha, Zed Books, 2018, hardcover, 304 pp. MEB: $27. Starting with the earliest references in Egyptian and Assyrian texts, Masalha explores how Palestine and its Palestinian identity have evolved over thousands of years, from the Bronze Age to the present day. Drawing on a rich body of sources and the latest archaeological evidence, he shows how Palestine’s multicultural past has been distorted and mythologized by Biblical lore and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the process, Masalha reveals that the concept of Palestine is not a modern invention or one constructed in opposition to Israel but is firmly rooted in an ancient past.

Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations, by Ronen Bergman, Random House, 2018, hardcover, 784 pp. MEB: $26.

The Talmud says: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” This instinct to take every measure, even the most aggressive, to defend the Jewish people is hardwired into Israel’s DNA. In this page-turning, eye-opening book, journalist and military analyst Ronen Bergman offers a riveting inside account of the targeted killing programs: their successes, their failures, and the moral and political price exacted on the men and women who approved and carried out the missions.

S H I P P I N G R AT E S Most items are discounted and available on a first-come, first-served basis. Orders accepted by mail, phone (800-368-5788 ext. 2), or Web (www.middleeastbooks.com). All payments in U.S. funds. Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express accepted. Please send mail orders to Middle East Books and More, 1902 18th St. NW, Washington, DC 20009, with checks and money orders made out to “AET.” U.S. Shipping Rates: Please add $5 for the first item and $2.50 for each additional item. Canada & Mexico shipping charges: Please add $15 for the first item and $3.50 for each additional item. International shipping charges: Please add $15 for the first item and $6 for each additional item. We ship by USPS Priority unless otherwise requested.

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THE WORLD LOOKS AT THE MIDDLE EAST

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Leiden, Leiden, Netherlands

The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Canada

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De Volkskrant, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Jyllands-Posten, Viby, Denmark

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Landsmeer, Landsmeer, Netherlands AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

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IS THE “KUSHNER PLAN” REALLY THE “NETANYAHU PLAN”?

To Newsday, June 21, 2019 Commentator Dan Raviv is absolutely right that the June 25-26 “Peace to Prosperity” workshop in Bahrain is a mirage [“A Trump-Kushner optical illusion,” Opinion, June 17].

Raviv’s suggestion that the Trump administration’s real goal is to remove the two-state solution from the agenda in exchange for a few economic benefits to the Palestinians is right on target.

What Raviv fails to mention, however, is that the approach of President Donald Trump and his son-in-law, White House adviser Jared Kushner, is the same one pioneered by right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Before returning to power in 2009, Netanyahu introduced his plan for “economic peace,” by which he meant that the Palestinians should put aside their political demands for a state alongside Israel and in return Israel would help improve the Palestinian economy.

Ten years later, the Trump administration, represented by an ambassador to Israel aligned with Israel’s right-wing and its West Bank settler movement, is pushing forward Netanyahu’s anti-two-state agenda.

Ron Skolnik, Huntington, NY

WHY PALESTINIANS ARE CRYING

To the Hartford Courant, June 20, 2019 As I read Jesse Samuels’ letter “Sick children from Gaza” [Letters, June 19], I could not help but wonder why doesn’t he feel the heartbreak of a young Palestinian child dying alone without her mother, as described in “Sick Gazans caught in IsAUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

raeli system” [Page A8, June 16].

The letter ignores that Israeli forces have killed thousands of Palestinians in Gaza and bombed and destroyed hospitals, schools, electrical plants and homes during the course of numerous military offenses against the people of Gaza.

In November 2017, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem reported that: “The Gaza Strip is the scene of a humanitarian disaster that has nothing to do with natural causes—it is entirely manmade, a direct result of official Israeli policy. Israel can choose to change this policy and considerably improve the lives of Gaza’s residents. It can also choose to continue this cruel, unjustifiable policy, which sentences the nearly two million people living in Gaza to a life of abject poverty and nearly inhuman conditions.”

A rabbi once said: “If you don’t know why I’m crying, then you can’t love me.”

Samuels should make an attempt to learn why Palestinian families are crying.

John T. Fussell, West Hartford, CT

FACTS MATTER WHEN DEBATING PALESTINE-ISRAEL CONFLICT

To the Indiana Daily Student, July 14, 2019 On Wednesday, the Indiana Daily Student published a letter to the editor that made several false assertions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The letter was responding to two recent columns by Bryce Greene that made astute criticisms of South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The letter claims that during the Great March of Return protests last summer, when Gazans demonstrated near the fence that traps them inside Gaza, “thousands of Israelis would have been slaughtered” by rockets if not for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. Yet, according to data compiled from Israeli government sources and Israel’s leading human rights organization B’Tselem, in the full decade before Iron Dome was installed, a total of 17 Israelis died from the thousands of primitive projectiles launched

by Palestinian militants.

However, in just the first six months of the protests, Israel shot dead 150 demonstrators, including 31 children, and injured over 10,000 others. During the same period, one Israeli soldier was injured and one killed near the Gaza fence.

The letter also said Hamas offered children $83 to get injured in the protests, a claim whose only sources are the Israeli

military and Israel’s state media outlet Kan. The letter called on Hamas to stop building “terror tunnels,” which is strange terminology seeing as not one terrorist attack has ever been carried out through the tunnels, and Israeli intelligence says they’re aimed at military targets.

The letter says “Palestinians were offered peace plans in 1947, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007, 2008 and once again at the 2019 Bahrain Conference.” I have no idea why 2002, 2003 and 2007 are listed— such offers simply never occurred. The mention of this year’s Bahrain conference, where Jared Kushner unveiled part of his so-called “deal of the century,” is deceptive, because that proposal neither promises peace nor addresses any of the conflict’s core issues like borders and refugees. As for the other years, the claim is true but misleading.

Yes, Palestinians were offered peace deals in 1947, 2000 and 2008. In fact, Palestinians could achieve “peace” at any time by simply submitting to Israel’s will.

But the offers were rejected because they failed to sufficiently address Palestinians’ grievances over the loss of their homeland and the deprivation of their human rights.

I feel no compulsion to praise Hamas, and nothing in this letter is written with that purpose. I simply believe that if we wish to have a serious discussion of Israel and Palestine, the first step is sticking to the facts.

Matthew Waterman. The writer is a senior at Indiana University Bloomington.

WAR WITH IRAN IS NEXT STEP IN “CLEAN BREAK” STRATEGY

To the Star-News, July 3, 2019 In the article of June 25, 2019, “Iran says ‘Idiotic’ sanctions shut doors of diplomacy,” Associated Press writers Nasser Karimi and Jon Gambrell give a good picture of the verbal volleys between the U.S. and Iran. However, the editorial omits one very important fact: Verbal volleys or not, if the U.S. and Israel want war with Iran, we will have war with Iran.

In “Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” written for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in 1996 by neocons David Wurmser, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, we read the objectives are to remove Saddam Hussain from power in Iraq (done), armed incursions into Lebanon (done, several times), and possible strikes against Syria (done) and Iran (not yet “done”).

Thus, despite verbal exchanges, not only by Trump but also by Secretary of

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State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton, who was part of Bush’s administration when we invaded Iraq for WMD that were never there, Iran is last in the “Clean Break” mix.

Think President Trump and Bibi will let that go?

Loretta Krause, Southport, NC

MISLEADING HEADLINES ON IRAN

To the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, July 5, 2019 I was outraged to read the Herald-Tribune’s false headline “Tehran Breaches Pact.”

There was no longer a pact. It was killed when Donald Trump withdrew from it and reimposed the economic sanctions on Iran that had been lifted as the result of the original nuclear deal.

Your headline suggests Iran is at fault, and will be read as such by those who go no further than the headlines.

The world’s economy trades in U.S. dollars, so the other signatories to the pact, England, France, Germany, China and Russia, do not have sufficient economic means to offset the sanctions.

We are now closer to war with Iran. The true blame must lie with the chicken hawks Trump and John Bolton and the supine Republican U.S. Senate.

Robert J. Catineau, Sarasota, FL

PURPOSE OF NUCLEAR DEAL

To the Los Angeles Times, July 16, 2019 While I share Alireza Nader’s concern about the despotic nature of the current Iranian regime, I am troubled by his condemnation of the Iran nuclear deal. Nader cites the agreement’s failure to address several issues including sunset provisions, Iran’s missile development program and the regime’s alleged bad behavior.

With respect to the sunset provisions, they are the result of a multiparty negotiation that would be subject to renegotiation at a later date. As for the missile program, the agreement was never intended to cover that activity—as a sovereign nation, Iran is entitled to build a missile program of its own.

Finally, we must recognize the fact that Iran is entitled to promote its own self-interests and to support causes that are aligned with those regional interests.

Regrettably, Nader neglects to acknowl72

edge that, prior to the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal, the agreement achieved its stated purpose: preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

Andrew Spathis, Los Angeles, CA

GOVERNMENT’S OBSTRUCT HUMAN-TO-HUMAN SOLIDARITY

To The Denver Post, June 30, 2019 It is with great alarm that I have watched the escalation toward war and an armed conflict between Iran and the United States. I am not a politician. I am a military veteran having attained the rank of sergeant as part of an ODA Team assigned to the 7th Special Forces Group. I am also a climber. In 50-plus years of climbing, I have had the opportunity to climb in Iran and have encountered several Iranian climbers in the U.S. as well.

My encounters have only been positive.

While in Iran several people on separate occasions remarked about the kinship the Iranian people felt with Americans. It was based on the openness and hospitality with strangers that they thought was shared by both cultures. I experienced that hospitality visiting their beautiful country.

Many in Iran, just like in the U.S., do not agree with their government, but they do deeply love their country as we do. Whatever challenges exist between our governments need to be handled with diplomacy and direct engagement. War with Iran is entirely avoidable and I beseech our president and our national leaders to work toward building a lasting peace in Iran, the Middle East and worldwide.

Jim Donini, Ouray, CO

FOCUS ON NEEDS AT HOME

To The Baltimore Sun, July 5, 2019 We are living in a very concerning situation with the current administration's warmongering efforts toward Iran (“Iran will increase uranium enrichment to ‘any amount we want,’ president says,” July 3). A war with Iran would be nothing more than an-

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

other waste of trillions of tax dollars that could be going to building infrastructure, providing health care, funding education and other programs that actually help citizens. It is also important to know it won’t be the children of the war hawks in Washington and billionaires that fight this war. It will be young men and women who are my age from working-class families just like mine who go off and die in this conflict.

As citizens, we don’t even have things like transparent government, a fair election process, maintained roads, fully funded schools, a health care system where all our citizens have health insurance, affordable higher education, environmental protections, a fair criminal justice system, livable wages and more. Yet we are supposed to believe that the biggest issue we face and our enemy is a bunch of young adults around my age in Iran? I don’t buy it and neither should you. Our nation used to focus on being world leaders on everything from science to providing an opportunity for our citizens to be all they can be and everything in between. However, today that is sadly no longer the case. What remains is a political system that is so entrenched by money and partisan politics that everything is controlled by special interests, and the only thing we seem to be able to get accomplished is starting new wars.

Don’t believe me? The White House sent an unclassified report to Congress stating the U.S. is officially fighting wars in seven countries. We can’t continue to do this with so many issues affecting us at home. That is why it is time to embrace a new generation of leadership. One that not only changes our broken political system that can’t get anything done but also ends the decades of horrible foreign policy that has only resulted in endless war, thousands of preventable deaths and the destabilization of several parts of the world from South America to the Middle East. We must elect leaders that implement policies that allow us to dream and be world leaders when it comes to policy, innovation and science once more.

We can accomplish this goal but only if we come together and organize for it. Then we can usher in a new era of how government in a representative democracy is supposed to be. It all starts by opposing a war in Iran.

Jared Schablein, Pittsville, MD ■ AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

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O• B • I • T • U • A • R • I • E • S Georgie Anne Geyer, 84, died on May 15 at her home in Washington, DC of complications from pneumonia. The “globe-trotting reporter” inspired other women journalists to become foreign correspondents.

Mike Royko, a former colleague, wrote that when she began her career in 1959 in the Chicago Daily News newsroom, “a woman was as rare as a teetotaler.” Geyer went on to become a syndicated columnist. She interviewed Fidel Castro many times in Cuba, publishing a biography called Guerrilla Prince in 1991.

In 1975, Geyer moved to Washington, DC to write a syndicated column for the Los Angeles Times and then, in 1980, for the Universal Press Syndicate. More than 120 newspapers, as well as the Washington Report, picked up her column. She interviewed Iraq’s Saddam Hussain, Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, Jordan’s King Hussein and Palestine Liberation Organization’s dfleader Yasser Arafat.

Geyer spoke Spanish, Portuguese, German and Russian. In 2007, she was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue, which affected her speech, ending her TV talk-show and moderator invitations, as well as her regular appearances on PBS’s “Washington Week in Review” and Voice of America. She continued to write her column and published 10 books, including When Cats Reigned Like Kings, a remarkable book describing cat-goddesses in Egypt, monks in Myanmar who teach cats to jump through hoops, and a Virginia family that guarded the heritage of the Japanese bobtail. The last time the Washington Report spoke with Geyer was at a Sept.

28, 2018 ANERA fundraiser for refugees, where admirers surrounded her, praising the long career of a fearless journalist who covered the world’s hot spots.

Eugene (Gene) Hall Bird, 94, died June 2 of complications from pneumonia at a retirement home in Vancouver, WA. Raised on a farm in Eugene, OR, he joined the Navy in 1943 and went on to study journalism at the University of Oregon. In 1948 he married Jerine (Jerri), and in 1950 they attended graduate school in Sweden together, inspiring a life-long fascination with international relations. Bird joined the State Department as a Rockefeller Foundation inAUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019

Delinda C. Hanley and Sami Tayeb

tern, and in 1953 joined the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. In 1956, his first overseas assignment was in the Jordanian-controlled part of Jerusalem, which was the subject of a memoir by his son, Kai Bird, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978. It was in Jerusalem that Gene and the Washington Report’s late publisher, Andrew I. Killgore, met and became lifelong friends.

Bird went on to serve in Beirut, Jeddah, Cairo, Riyadh, Bombay and New Delhi.

After two decades in the Foreign Service, Gene and Jerri Bird retired to Washington, DC. He became director of the Council for the National Interest (CNI), co-founded by Republican Congressmen Paul Findley (IL) and Paul “Pete” McCloskey (CA). CNI seeks “to promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values, protects our national interests, and which contributes to a just solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.” During his tenure Bird led several delegations of Americans to the Middle East and organized presentations on Capitol Hill.

From 1990 to 2002 Bird was the Washington Report’s State Department correspondent. Washington Report cofounders Andrew Killgore and Richard H. Curtiss provided office space to CNI for several years, in what is now the Museum of the Palestinian People.

Jerri, founder of Partners for Peace, which sponsored an annual speaking tour of “Women of Jerusalem: Three Women, Three Faiths, One Shared City,” died in 2012. Survivors include their son, Kai Bird of New York City, Christina Macaya of Camas, WA, Nancy Bird of Cordova, AK, and Shelly Bird of Alexandria, VA. John Gunther Dean, 93, died on June 6. Born in Breslau, Germany, Dean served as U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia, Lebanon, Denmark, Thailand and India. He was forever haunted by his role in the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Cambodia during the last days of the Khmer Republic as the capital fell to the Khmer Rouge.

“We’d accepted responsibility for Cambodia and then walked out without fulfilling our promise,” Dean recalled. “That’s the worst thing a country can do. And I cried because I knew what was going to happen.”

In an article published in the November 2002 issue of the Washington Re-

port, publisher Andy Killgore described Dean’s urgent phone call from the office of the secretary of state before his confirmation hearing as Ambassador to Lebanon in 1978. “John,” the caller said, “we have just noticed that your mother’s [maiden] name is Ashkenazi. Does this make a serious problem for you?”

“Absolutely not,” the near legendary Dean replied, “my father was Jewish, too. I represent a secular America, so that’s all there is to it.”

Ambassador Dean traveled from one end of Lebanon to the other, from 1978 to 1981, in the early days of its civil war, trying to keep the divided country intact.

Israel maintained a rump state in southern Lebanon, and Dean argued that close ties with Israel would harm Christian interests in the long run. He cabled protests to Tel Aviv and Washington, DC whenever Israeli planes intruded into Lebanese airspace.

In the May 2004 Washington Report, Killgore wrote about Israel’s attempt to assassinate Dean, his wife Martine, their daughter and her fiancé. “Had Mossad, Israel's secret intelligence organization, succeeded it would have been the perfect crime—the crime of the century. The plan was breathtaking in concept: to assassinate the American ambassador to Lebanon, in Lebanon, with American weapons, intended for Israeli’s defense only. Everything about it would point to Lebanon as the culprit,” Killgore wrote.

“But fate intervened, and things went wrong. The tires on Ambassador John Gunther Dean’s limousine automatically re-inflated when they were shot out...the light tank shell simply bounced off the car’s armor.” Dean’s papers, available at former President Jimmy Carter’s Library in Atlanta, show how no one was willing to talk to him about the Israeli assassination attempt, nor the anti-tank canister that had been made in America, shipped to Israel in 1974 and used to try to kill his family. His papers also describe the PLO’s attempts to help the U.S. gain the freedom of the American hostages in Iran. Ambassador Dean earned the respect and affection of Lebanon, which awarded him its highest decoration.

Dean suspected Israeli involvement in the 1986 plane crash that killed Pakistani President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq and

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AET’s 2019 Choir of Angels

the following are individuals, organizations, companies and foundations whose help between Jan. 11, 2019 and July 8, 2019 is making possible activities of the tax-exempt aet library endowment (federal id #52-1460362) and the american educational trust, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. some angels are helping us co-sponsor the conference “the israel lobby and american policy.” others are donating to our “Capital building fund,” which will help us expand Middle east books and More. We are deeply honored by their confidence and profoundly grateful for their generosity.

HUMMERS ($100 or more)

Anonymous, Maplewood, NJ Rizek & Alice Abusharr, Claremont, CA Dr. Robert Ashmore, Mequon, WI Mr. & Mrs. Sultan Aslam, Plains-, boro, NJ Marwan Balaa, San Jose, CA Rev. Robert E. Barber, Cooper City, FL Stanton Barrett, Ipswich, MA Allen & Jerrie Bartlett, Philadelphia, PA Anna Bellisari, Yellow Springs, OH Prof. & Mrs. George Wesley Buchanan, Gaithersburg, MD Samer & Nora Burgan, Falls, Church, VA Gregory DeSylva, Rhinebeck, NY Bernie Eisenberg, Los Angeles, CA Kassem Elkhalil, Arlington, TX Elizabeth Haas, Wilmington, DE Delinda C. Hanley, Kensington, MD Walter Hixson, Akron, OH Bilquis Jaweed, West Chester, OH Ghazala Kazi, Columbia, MD M. Jamil Khan, Bloomfield Hills, MI Eugene Khorey, Homestead, PA David & Renee Lent, Hanover, NH Edwin Lindgren, Overland Park, KS Gwendolyn McEwen, Bellingham, WA Bill McGrath, Northfield, MN Merrill O’Donnell, New Westminster, Canada U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Arnold Raphel. His insistence on calling for a full investigation into the circumstances around Zia-ul-Haq and Raphel’s deaths led Washington to bring his 30-year distinguished career in the Foreign Service to an abrupt halt in 1989, according to his granddaughter, Laura Dean. He is survived by his wife Martine, his children Catherine Curtis, Paul Dean and Joseph Dean.

Shamshad Ahmad, 68, Shamshad Ahmad, 68, suffered a major stroke at his home in the Pine Hills neighborhood of Albany, NY, and died July 11, after he was rushed to intensive care.

Born in India in 1951, Ahmad moved to Albany in 1979, taught physics at the University at Albany and was the president of Masjid As-Salam, as well as an inter74

A. Karim Pathan, Cary, NC Jeffrey Pekrul, San Francisco, CA Peggy Rafferty, Cedar Grove, NC Amb. William & Andrea Rugh, Hingham, MA Irmgard Scherer, Fairfax, VA Bernice Shaheen, Palm Desert, CA*** Dr. Mostafa Hashem Sherif, Tinton Falls, NJ Jean Snyder, Greenbelt, MD

ACCOMPANISTS ($250 or more)

Anonymous, Eatonton, GA Diane Adkin, Camas, WA Dr. William Fuller, Valdosta, GA Ken Galal, San Francisco, CA Jenny Hartley, Northfielders for Justice, Northfield, MN William Lightfoot, Vienna, VA

TENORS & CONTRALTOS ($500 or more) Dr. & Mrs. Roger Bagshaw, Big Sur, CA Raymond Gordon, Venice, FL Brigitte Jaensch, Carmichael, CA Robert Younes, Potomac, MD

BARITONES & MEZZO SOPRANOS ($1,000 or more)

Americans for Middle East Understanding, New York, NY Drs. A.J. & M. T. Amirana, Las Vegas, NV faith community leader and advocate.

Family and friends remember him for his traits of honesty, humbleness, courageousness, compassion and wisdom.

Ahmad co-founded Project SALAM, an organization that provides legal support and advocacy for Muslims who have been wrongly accused of terrorism charges by the FBI and Justice Department. He helped found the organization in the wake of a post-9/11 terrorism sting operation against Yassin Aref, the imam of Masjid As-Salam and Mohammed Hossain, a co-founder of the mosque.

Both were convicted and imprisoned by a federal jury in 2006. In 2009 Ahmad published a book about the case, Rounded Up: Artificial Terrorists and Muslim Entrapment After 9/11.

Washington RepoRt on Middle east affaiRs

Karen Ray Bossmeyer, Louisville, KY G. Edward & Ruth Brooking, Jr., Wilmington, DE Nancy Eddy, Chevy Chase, MD Gary Feulner, Dubai, UAE Ronald & Mary Forthofer, Longmont, CO Evan & Leman Fotos, Istanbul, Turkey Alfred R. Greve, Holmes, NY Ghazy M. Kader, Shoreline, WA Jack Love, Kailua Kona, HI Roberta McInerney, Washington, DC * Robert & Sharon Norberg, Lake City, MN Mary Norton, Austin, TX M.F. Shoukfeh, Lubbock, TX Dr. Imad Tabry, Fort Lauderdale, FL Donn Trautman, Evanstown, IL

CHOIRMASTERS ($5,000 or more)

Donna B. Curtiss, Kensington, MD*, ** Estate of Dorothy Love Gerner, San Francisco, CA Dr. & Mrs. Clyde Farris, West Linn, OR*, ** John Gareeb, Atlanta, GA John & Henrietta Goelet, Washington, DC *In Memory of Andrew I. Killgore **In Memory of Richard H. Curtiss ***In Memory of Dr. Jack Shaheen

Aref, who has since been released from prison and deported to Iraq, issued a statement in light of Ahmad’s passing: “During the hardest and darkest days in our community, this man stood firm and tall like a mountain. He was a leader but all about humility and service to others.

That was his passion, that was his joy and his way to lead! Last night, America lost a good and sincere citizen and contributor, Albany lost their professor and peacemaker, the Muslim community lost their leader, my children lost their caregiver and mentor, and I lost my loyal friend and big brother. May Allah have mercy on him and reward him on our behalf.”

Ahmad leaves behind his wife, Kishwar, four children—Sajid, Huma, Faisal and Shazia—and 11 grandchildren. ■ august/septeMbeR 2019

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American Educational Trust Washington Report on Middle East Affairs P.O. Box 53062 Washington, DC 20009

August/September 2019 Vol. XXXVIII, No. 5

Iranians walk past a mural illustrating ancient Persian poetry in the Iranian capital of Tehran, June 25, 2019. That same day President Hassan Rouhani said new U.S. sanctions against senior Iranian officials showed Washington is “lying” about an offer to negotiate.

ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images